


Glory to God in the Highest Heaven, and on Earth Peace to those on Whom His Favor Rests

by legendarytobes



Series: Michaella Holidays [2]
Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: 14 billion year old virgin, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Christmas, Christmas fic, F/M, Fluff, Fuck You Pete, Humor, Wing Kink, holiday fic, nightmares and PTSD, romcom, wing complications
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-05
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:14:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 31,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27830596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/legendarytobes/pseuds/legendarytobes
Summary: After "Well at least There Was Pie," Michael is getting into earthly traditions and dating Ella for Christmas. It might have a steeper learning curve than he thinks.
Relationships: Ella Lopez/Michael
Series: Michaella Holidays [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2036944
Comments: 94
Kudos: 119





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Sequel to "Well at least There Was Pie" so read that first.

**_Glory to God in the Highest Heaven, and on Earth Peace to those on Whom His Favor Rests_ **

**Chapter 1**

"Do you like this one?"

Michael isn't sure how to answer that question. It seems like a trap. She's asked him this about the last three trees just at this lot. They've already driven from Laguna to West Hollywood and all the way to Calabasas in the hopes of finding some perfect tree. Lopez decided that if they hit the richer areas, then they'd find "the good stuff."

He's not sure how you qualify a good tree from a bad one. They're all tall, overpriced, going to shed needles like crazy, and be a fire hazard by New Year's. What's the point? At least a fake tree is an investment. That'll get used year after year.

Michael eyes the tag on the Douglas Fir and sighs. This one is over two hundred. His eye twitches and he realizes with Ella's death glare on him that he has to answer.

"It's good?"

Lopez thrusts it into his arms, and the tree is easily three feet taller than he is. Michael really shouldn't have said she could set up a tree at his place, but he figured that dumbass chicken would have destroyed a tree at Lopez's place. However, he's been to three lots in five hours, suffered through Lopez's speed breaking driving on the highways, and while he isn't cold---he isn't made for that---he's definitely getting stiff.

And all trees look exactly alike.

"No, this won't work either. _No funcionará_. It just...there are gaps around the base. I mean there are branches but they're not spaced out enough."

"This is a tree. It's not rocket science, Lopez."

She rolls her eyes and points to where he needs to put the thing back. Michael does it, and to be fair, it weighs nothing to him, but it might be a bit rude to use him as a valet for the day. He's still technically the Sword of God. He is not an errand boy.

Then she looks up at them with those big, coffee brown eyes of hers and his grumpiness melts a little. Don't get him wrong, being grouchy is his default setting, but it's harder to keep up all the gruffness when Ella is looking at him like that.

When warmth is flaring through his gut.

"We're just not gonna find what I'm looking for."

"Okay, so just hear me out---"

She glares at him, and he's glad she's mortal. He's pretty sure she's mortal. As far as he knows, she's neither demon or Miracle or sibling, so that's all a plus. However, the girl can really stare him down. "You just want to stop."

"I'm new to the Christmas tree hunt, but do they usually take six hours?"

"The perfect tree takes time! It's an art, Michael."

"You know this is all a bastardization of the Roman tradition of Saturnalia. You do get that, right? None of this is related to the actual birth of," he lowers his voice and looks over his shoulders to be sure they're alone before continuing. "...my half-brother. You don't need a tree. It's a pagan rite."

"I know that. I get it. They didn't have pine trees in Israel. Like, duh. However, now we have trees, and I've always done a fake tree, and I don't have to this year. Bonus, I can do one that's real big cause you can schlepp for me. So, seriously, we need to find the perfect one."

Michael smirks at her and considers the row of giant yet still identical to him trees. "What if you've built the perfect one up in your head until it's not something that exists, chica? I mean, there's perfection to a point, and then there's you made it up and even my dad doesn't make them that good."

Ella frowns up at him and for a moment, her anger is replaced by something else, by this total awe and her jaw's hanging open as well. Michael shifts uncomfortably under that look, and he would much rather that she be pissed at him and his, okay, cheapness (he'd have just bought a 3 footer and been done with it) than she go into a blank moment remembering that her beloved Big Guy and his dad are the same being.

" _Rayos_ , it's been a week, and that's so hard to get used to. Your dad is..."

Michael rolls his eyes and shoves both hands in his pockets, not just his bad one. "I know...and I know that's a lot to wrap a mortal's head around. I just...it's complicated?" He barely keeps himself from reminding her that he's still just himself, just the same surly and impatient guy she's been going to museums with for months now. He's certainly not the warrior or the judge he was.

Not even close.

"I know. It's just weird. I don't suppose you have a sibling who's like the Angel of Trees who can just whip us up the perfect one."

"I am sure since mom and dad had so many of us that there's an angel of flora out there somewhere, but there are so many angels, and even I don't know all my siblings. However, there's no short cut. My point is that I think you're imagining this perfect tree and building up everything in your head. It's okay to have a normal tree."

"Yeah, but this can be a great one!"

He shakes his head as she turns back to evaluating the row of giant Douglas Firs. "If you say so, Lopez, but even if I'm immortal, I'm not staying on this lot for the rest of my life."

"I'm sure the perfect tree is here. Just give me a few more minutes." She disappears around a corner, and he hopes she finds something that meets her impossible standards.

Still, he's kind of stepped his foot in it already by mentioning Dad and reminding her---as if it were possible to forget it---that he's technically an archangel. One forbidden for now to have any access to the Silver City but still most definitely an angel of the lord. So, in for a penny and in for a pound...

"Lopez?"

"I am going to find the tree, Michael, chill out."

He rounds the corner and then takes three brisk steps to help keep a tree at least his height from collapsing on her. "First, I am new to this, but I'm pretty sure spending the holiday in the ER isn't tradition."

She winks at him, and it's really hard to stay mad at her. Damn it. "Depends on the family. Papí used to put up these lights and a fake Rudolph head on our fire escape. Well, one year, he might have electrocuted himself just a little. It wasn't Christmas Day but the first of December? Definitely an ER visit."

"For a fake reindeer head, right?"

"Ooh, you've heard the song?"

He rolls his eyes indulgently. "I've been on earth in spates. I have been to malls during the holiday season before, enough that even I have some of those carols memorized. Yeah, so your dad almost died to get the perfect red-nosed reindeer display." Michael hefts the tree up so she can get a better look at it. Ella shakes her head again and he sets it back on the pile. "This weird Christmas quest makes more sense now, must be hereditary. But no one is getting injured to make a perfect Christmas at my place."

"Yet," she chirps and then gasps at a tree that is, and Michael is sure of this, ten feet if it's an inch high. "This is the one!"

Michael sighs and lifts it up and spins it for her. It's not heavy but it's full and it takes a lot to reach and set his hand around its trunk. He is also going to have his good hand covered in sap on the way home; he can tell. "Good yet?"

She squeals again and his sensitive, Celestial ears can barely take it. "Yes, see! It took the six hours to find the right one, and this is what we needed!"

He feels his cheeks heat just a little with the word we. Everything is so new over the last week, and he doesn't still quite get how he went from humoring her as a buffer against her family to being her...well date's the best word. They're hardly exclusive. He doesn't have other offers, but he knows that Lopez attracts so many people---usually the crappiest type of guys---like a beacon. If she's clubbing or grabbing lattes with someone else too, he doesn't know.

Michael has put no stipulations on whatever this is, and he is far too afraid to. Honestly, he knows he has no leverage and that Ella could have three other side guys or chicks or whatever and he'd still be grateful for their time spent together, even if he's covered in sap and, if he were mortal, he'd be freezing by now. His right side aches just a little since the injuries always do worse at night or when what passes for cold in Los Angeles settles in.

Celestial arthritis.

Utterly pathetic.

He says nothing in particular to her as she babbles rapid fire instructions to the lot workers. Michael steps back when it's time for them to wrap it in twine and shove it on the top of her vintage Mustang, and they tie and thread ropes through the car windows to keep it safe. Michael is realizing that not insisting on only lots near his house was a mistake. If he loses this on the 405, he is not going back for it, and Lopez will make do with a fiberoptic tree like Dad intended.

(Okay, Michael has 0 idea what Dad intended, never really did. He's pretty sure whatever humans have made of Christmas wasn't it. Then again, he doesn't know his half-brother all that well anyway. Certainly not as well as Gabriel, and that's its own cluster fuck.)

On the road home, he doesn't say much. Michael's a talker when he winds others up or plays his brothers' fears against them. By nature, he prefers to listen, a habit learned from eons of letting his power work and having his victims---yes he admits it---tell them all he needs. However, with Lopez, that's not really a problem. She mixes colorful road rage-induced epithets (in three languages and he's thinking the last one is Klingon for sure) with singing bars of Christmas carols from the radio. Michael is glad that he's not mortal. Driving in L.A. looks awful (he flies with what's left of his wings or Ubers if he has to), and Lopez is doing fine, but it's also a 50-50 thing on getting back to Laguna.

At least if they crash, he'll be in one piece.

Michael chuckles to himself just a little, thinking of Sam and his own tendency to speed race everywhere. Would that he'd gotten into some high-speed crash while still mortal around his precious detective. Okay, so Michael's a petty asshole.

Sue him.

He never said he wasn't.

Ugh, and self-actualization is a pain and a half. Rot your wings of, make yourself a giant burned lasagna of scarred flesh. Maybe just never heal. Michael understands self-actualization better than the others, knew about it from early observation millennia ago (Sam and Menny were too busy posturing and fighting for the top of the heap to notice). Doesn't net him anything. 

He can't control it either.

Well, not entirely true.

For a few hours at a time, if he has to, he can fake being normal, but it never lasts and the rebound on his injured side is a bitch and a half. But the idea of being mortal...of being able to be wounded, well moreso, because of one human?

Michael shudders a little at the thought.

Nope, not for him.

He's already far too vulnerable for his tastes, and his siblings know it.

Ella frowns at him. "You got quiet."

"You were filling the space fine, Lopez."

She rolls her eyes at him, but they seem a bit less bright when she regards him again, and he gets the smallest hint of the noxious odor of lilies. He has never hated any object more than those cursed flowers. He can feel what she felt, has accidentally tapped into that on more than one occasion, even though she's never noticed. And he's an ass.

Michael offers her a smile, which he's sure comes out more like a pained grimace, but he's just not smooth like Samael. "I like when you talk."

"I know, but I talk like way, way too much and my last boyfriend---"

Michael's eyes widen at her. "I...is that what we're doing?"

"I asked to date you!"

"Well, I haven't been to earth for more than a day or two at a time, even on Father's business in about...I dunno...when was Prohibition for you guys?"

Ella blinks at him. "No fucking way."

"Well, yeah the flappers? They were interesting but I was only in San Fran for almost two months.” He shrugs as best he can. “Sometimes even Celestial business takes time to clear up. But I got that most people thought dating was an exclusive thing. I wasn't sure...didn't think that had to maybe mean now boyfriend-girlfriend." Michael snorts. "Believe me, Lopez, I have heard a bit filtered through Maze about Samael's exploits. He and Eve were a thing---and the group's too incestuous, not that I care---but they had orgies too so..."

"I am not doing orgies. Not my thing."

Michael pinches the bridge of his nose and wishes he were smoother than he actually is. "I didn't ask. I just...Lopez, you're one of the only people I know who isn't a poker buddy or a regular at trivia night. Occasionally, I bump into Maze who is always all over town bounty hunting and, I'll be honest, I frequent dive bars for my games. But I don't...I'm not gonna pretend I have options either. I'd do it 1:1..." He blanches at how that came out. "Exclusivity is fine by me." Michael sighs and shrugs his bad shoulder but it barely moves. "I figured you wouldn't want to be hemmed in."

Her expression softens even as she keeps her eyes (thank Dad) on the road. A soft hand is soon on his knee, and it takes everything Michael has not to jump out of his skin. He's just not used to gentle touches or care. He wants to be, but he's not.

It's been far far too long.

Whole ice ages have literally come and gone.

"That's sweet of you. Okay, so I have bad habits with guys and crappy taste."

Michael snorts. "That makes me feel better, Lopez."

"You know what I mean. Although poker player and estranged from his family is kind of up my alley?"

"Be still my heart."

"Sin embargo," she continues. Dating her is gonna be like a Berlitz crash course already; he can tell. "...but I do serial monogamy. Even if it's a few weeks. I don't step out, you know? I wouldn't do that to you."

Michael can't say anything for a while after that and something tight clenches in his chest. It's not painful, exactly, but he can't quite name the feeling either.

Finally, he can speak without sound like a "prat" as his brother would say (and that affectation is so dumb). "Thanks. Then boyfriend and girlfriend. Damn, that sounds so sixth grade."

And it occurs to him then that Decker's kid might have literally more dating experience than he does. Fuck, Michael hopes Ella hasn't pieced that much together. 

"Thanks, well, uh, I wouldn't either. Even if I could or anyone else was crazy enough to want me. Also, I like when you talk. Believe me. I grew up with Sam. I have heard someone talk literally for millions of years on end. I'm good,” Michael explains.

Ella pulls off the highway at the exit toward his home. And he can tell she wants to say something because she's turned the radio down and "All I Want for Christmas is You" goes quiet to at least human ears. Also, she's wriggling in her seat just a bit.

"What?" he prods, regretting his own curiosity.

"For Christmas Day...uh, I know it's us chilling here, but if you want to, well, I can have any plus one I want for Linda's Christmas Eve dinner. Do you want to come?"

Michael hunches his shoulders higher, and it's a substitute for the wall of feathers he can't currently wrap around himself in the car, at least not safely. "That's Samael and Amenadiel's thing. I doubt that even a year or so out, Chloe Decker wants me there. And I'm positive Linda hasn't forgiven me for exaggerating about Chucky's health. I didn't make him sick, but I did use the illness to my advantage. I can understand that for most mothers, their kid's safety is a big trigger. It's a pretty common fear. Many permutations, but the same thing over and over for mothers."

"Your mom didn't worry about you?"

Michael sighs. "My mother and I are complicated. Every part of my family is." Perhaps not Azrael, not exactly, but she still preferred Sam best. They all did, even after the Fall. "We share too many things in common, and she was not the best caretaker for any of us. I appreciate in the beginning her quite literal light and warmth, but no, I don't know what it is firsthand to have a mother who wants to protect me, no." He considers it. "I know you and your mom---"

"Mami and I are not talking after that stunt last week."

He nods. "I wouldn't expect you too. I kind of liked your _abuelita_ even if she was handsy. Jay's not a bad guy." Michael arches an eyebrow at her. "He knows, you know. Sam showed him what he is long before he ever met me."

" _No me jodas_! You're fucking with me!" she says, pulling into his driveway and then lightly slapping his arm as if he weren't the leader of Heaven's legions. Well, he's not anymore, so it fits for them. 

"No, and he still told me to let you be. It takes a lot of balls to yell at an archangel. I was impressed. But yeah, your mom? She sucks. Mine just happens to be crazy."

"How crazy do you have to be to be cut out of the Bible?" Ella asks, turning the motor off.

"You know the Great Flood?"

"Yeah of course, dude.

"She was pissed humanity existed. I never really...I couldn't deal with her after that." Michael sighs again and eases his way out of the car, ignoring the way his shoulder twinges. "I don't hate humans, not like Her. I just don't like them much."  
  
Ella glares at him after hopping out of the car and rounding the front. "Wow, bud, great ego boost there."

"You're special," he says simply, and maybe she is. He certainly tolerates her better than Sam's other pets. "However, I don't actively wish you all badly either. It's...I was made as a protector. It's ingrained somewhere in me, even if I'm hardly that these days. I just...I like to be left alone, blend into the wallpaper. And that's not Sam and never has been. Honestly, it's not the First Born always with his pompous rules and speeches either. I appreciate you're inviting me, but I don't want to go."

"Maybe if you and Luce---"

Michael sours at that even as he opens the door to his house. They'll need to set out sheets and tarps and she bought a new tree stand (whatever that is) from Wal-Mart this morning. It's going to be an ordeal, he can tell, but they're not quite ready to drag the tree in yet. 

"I can't make up with him. I know you like us both." He stiffens at that. She probably has...well who hasn't in L.A....but she might be torn between her friend now and him. Michael's no fool. She's known Sam for years, and he's saved her life more than once even if Ella doesn't know that or is only piecing it altogether now. If he presses, he knows clearly who she'll pick.

Whom they all pick.

Always.

"I do, but it's sad to be alone at Christmas."

He offers her a small, half-smile. "I won't be. Besides, it's different for angels. We don't have to seek father's forgiveness with the Lamb. In Sam's case and my own, I suspect there isn't forgiveness to get. Besides, I've had my fill of the Silver City. Christmas just isn't really our holiday."

"Ooh, are there angel holidays?"

"Not really," he admits. There are times when the city is quiet, but mostly for molting season which is a pain and a half, but nothing celebratory. There is only one thing to celebrate.

Him.

And it must be at all times from worship choir in the mornings to the hymns and absolutions at night. When everything is a celebration, nothing truly is.

She sniffles a little and squeezes his good hand. Ella has yet to take his bad one, and he can't tell if she's scared to hurt him (she can't) or repelled. He's okay with it---the not touching his right side much. It's so awkward there. 

"Well, I will make you have a great Christmas anyway and cook some of my family favorites and everything. You're going to love it, Mister!"

"Good, and you can get your fill of the tribe and Sam, Menny, and even the douche on Christmas Eve. I won't take offense."

"It gets out by six, you know? Trixie's still in middle school, and Charlie's not even two yet. So, we could do midnight mass. It's really great down at St. Jerome's. Would you go?"

He stills and almost says no. He's not a fucking vampire, and demons don't even combust on sacred ground either. Nor Sam, more's the pity. However, Michael feels like he might be anathema there since he's been forbidden return to the Silver City, despite his retained gifts and angelic nature. But she's trying so hard and even with her almost-murder and the shattering of her world, Ella loves Father. 

And she tries.

He can too.

"Sure, Lopez. I haven't really gotten up close on the little half-brother's day in a long time. What can it hurt?"

"Great cause the service is so good. The songs and candles and then the mass with the good wine for once a year. It's..." she whirls to face him after passing him in the front hall, and brown eyes twinkle up at him. "...peaceful. I think we could both use that since Thanksgiving was not."

**

Michael is scared of Ella.

He led Father's legion against Satan (who is not terrifying even with the bat wings act sometimes now), fought the oldest darkness back to the Eldritch edges of creation, and has tangled far too often with Fenris to keep count. But he, the (very former) Sword of God is terrified of one Ella Lopez.

He thinks that's acceptable.

Anyone would be.

She's intense about this decorating thing and, sure, Michael's never had a tree before but he's seen Christmas specials on TV and seen them in stores. How the fuck hard could it be? 

Answer---hard as diamond.

Lopez is not treating this like a fun family even but rather like Caesar crossing the Rubicon. And Michael would know, an errand for Dad made him an observer to it.

He reaches again to set just a plain red glass ball on a branch. To be honest the set up of the tree and the ribbons around it weren't bad do. The lights are on but had shorted out at least once. It was through an hour of screwing and rescrewing tiny, idiot bulbs---and how could humans have iPhones but not have updated this since the 1970s---before they lit up.

Michael is scowling at the tree, expecting it to go out again. He is not Sam and would that he was. After all, if he were the Lightbringer, he'd be able to keep the lights on. A bit of Will and no fear of hunting through strands and strands of lights to fix the problem.

However, it's not even the light debacle that has made him wary of his girlfriend. No. It is the military precision with which she's set out her collections of ornaments and the graph---drawn on actual graph paper to boot---of the tree and which ornament goes where. 

He's tried to free style it more than once, and she's cowed him. Twice with her shoe, until he gave up on shoe beatings and waited for her instructions.

This is not how he thought human tree trimming would go. In the few commercials he's seen, well, Michael always thought it looked very casual and not like a navy SEAL mission.

Michael swallows and steps back. "We've been at the tree decorating for almost two hours. We've only got three balls on so far, and you have all the ornaments made like people and doves and cartoon characters." So many cartoon characters. Mostly superheroes, to be fair, and all of fine blown glass.

Ella's shoulders sag and the general attitude is gone, and for now his quirky girlfriend is staring back at him with wide eyes. " _Demonios_ , I really fucked this up, huh? I'm trying to show you a good time and a real Christmas, and I'm putting too much pressure on it, aren't I? Usually there's a system and I have to decorate a certain way to get as much of my limited-edition Justice League figures on the tree and I want it to be perfect---"

Michael takes a chance and steps forward to kiss her, relaxing as she sinks into his grasp. Again, a small, guilty part of him feels like he should explain about the multiverse, but the rest of him would like to do anything else but field questions about it for the next month. Besides, he can tell she's refrained from just spewing forth so many probing questions about Celestials and his Dad and Jesus and everything in between.

Of course, he'd date Dad's ultimate fangirl.

Save the shocks for later.

For now, he just lets her breathe.

Michael pulls back from her and can't help grinning like an idiot. "If making out is part of tree-trimming, then it just got better."

She sniffles and rubs at her eyes. "God...uh, you know what I mean."

"You're upset. I get it. It's hard to weed it out. But if you call that during sex, ever, I get to call Raquel, fair warning."

Ella's eyes almost bulge out of her head and he looks down at his shoes, suddenly upset that he's made it awkward. They're not even remotely there yet, and he figures that's the expiration date on their relationship anyway. After all, who wants to date a billions-of-years-old virgin?

He wouldn't even know where to start to make her happy, but dear Dad does he want to try.

"Sorry," he fumbles. "Bad joke. I just mean, I get that you'll curse like that or mention uh 'The Big Guy.' It's fine."

"But I'm being just so anal about it and ruining the fun. I just wanted to make this amazing, and I'm actually making you uncomfortable."

He looks up and notices the slight flush coloring her face. Michael is weak---so very weak, and that's his whole problem---so he has little problem lowering his walls and just testing the waters on her feelings. Ella is anxious but not of him, not exactly. More just flustered at the thought of sex at all after Pete, and Michael feels better in a way, like they both aren't sure how to proceed, even if they both want to.

He shuts his walls up tightly again. No need to spoil anything else or make her more anxious than she has to be. He always creates this antsy unrest in any room he's in. It's just...he wishes he were desire incarnate.

Story of his fucking life.

But he is not, and he's grateful Ella doesn't mind his customary unease.

He sits back down on the sofa because it's been a long day walking and schlepping and then setting that ten foot monster up---not heavy but awkward---and he is tired.

Defender of the Church and the Great Judge, and he is so tired by mortal activities. He hates himself for that and hates Sam for it even more.

But he hopes she doesn't notice that he's keeping off his feet as much as he can, trying to keep himself in one piece. Rested. "You can do whatever you want. I know it means a lot to you. I will try and be patient and not just shove it on any branch."

She throws up her hands and half-falls/half-bounces onto the couch beside him. "No, you don't get it. This should be fun. I've sucked all the fun out of this."

Michael laughs and it's the biggest, heartiest belly laugh he's had in months. It's so out of character for him that it shocks Lopez and her eyes go wide beside him. 

"Are you okay?" she asks.

He nods and wipes at his eyes. "Yeah, chica. Trust me, no one ever accused me of being fun."

"I think you're fun."

Michael blinks at her. Part of him assumes that this whole relationship thing is a mix of her insecurities after Pete, some probably half-nursed crush after Samael moved on as he's wont to do and being hurt by her family recently. He doesn't really think anyone could find him fun.

His brothers have reminded him of that, even the few times they have to work together to keep L.A. in one piece from whatever demon or monster strikes out occasionally.

But fun?

"You don't though. I mean..." he frowns at her, feeling awkward all over again. "...you couldn't, right? I don't go drinking cause it's expensive for no reason on my metabolism. I can't dance because, well, you know why." He trails off lamely for a bit before continuing. "And I'm sarcastic, but I know I'm not funny. Granted, Sam's all bad puns and Menny has no humor at all, but it's a low fucking bar, Lopez."

She curls up into him, and she's so warm. His shoulders twitch and his wings ache, and Michael has no idea why.

"But you know so much. You had great stories in the museums and I thought you just were a big nerd too who'd researched it all, but you knew cause you saw, right?"

"Some of it, yes, but some of it was catching up. The Silver City has down time if you're retired," he admits, not willing to go into how large an ocean of time he had with his siblings avoiding him and the mess of his wings. As if they could catch Sam's wrath by proxy. "So, my version of not-quite-drunk-history is fun?"

"And trivia night! And I am going to get you into Black Jack too." She frowns up at him, her eyes so dark and fathomless that Michael hasn't seen anything as dark since he and Sam worked to light the universe (mostly Sam to be fair; he was there for planet making truly). "Your family did a number on you too, huh?"

"Understatement of the ages, chica. First family, most fucked up family." He sighs and kisses the crown of her head gently. "But I've learned to deal. Anyway, how do we make this more fun, Lopez?"

She winks at him, and soon he finds them making out on the couch. It's not the first time, but it's the most vigorous and Michael's wings almost pop out when her hand goes low and rubs against his length through his slacks.

Michael yelps and pulls away from her, trying to keep his wings at bay.

They're not there yet...she needed the proof. He doesn't need them out just because he's horny (?).

And apparently hard.

_That's new. And ohhhh. Oh._

He did not know that about their wings. That's confusing, not a bad sensation, just odd.

Ella frowns at him and gets to her feet. "I...what's wrong?"

He rolls his eyes and rubs at his shoulders. "Honestly, it was going really well...amazing, but look, Lopez, if you went any further, I was gonna, well..."

Her eyes go wide as dinner plates and she's talking a mile a minute. "Oh, I get it. It's probably been a while cause you haven't been here since like the 20s and you know that makes sense and don't be shy about saying things. Dude, I have four brothers and talk all the time to...nevermind. I heard it all growing up. I'm not delicate and if you need to like get a drink of water or you can shower while I'm doing the tree or?"

He looks down at the ground and wishes it would swallow him whole. "No, not my...just my wings."

She quirks her head at him and sputters. "Your what now? I thought you were gonna co---"

"No, no!" 

Maybe. That's quite possible. How the fuck would he know?

However, his wings were definitely going to pop out first and they're huge and there's crystal and glass ornaments everywhere, and it's not a good idea. Not at all.

Michael swallows and sits on the couch as far from Ella as he can get and covers his lap with a pillow. His erection is still obviously tenting his khakis and his back itches in a thrilling way, but at least he's mostly still in one piece.

"Then?" she asks, and he appreciates that she stays standing for his personal space and frame of mind. 

"My wings," he whispers, and he can feel his cheeks flush.

He knows Sam doesn't do that, not ever, and Michael wonders if she's comparing them.

Fuck it all but Samael probably didn't whenever he and Ella had...oh this is such a bad idea. He can't compare and here they are anyway.

But she wants to try and he cares about her and no one ever tries with him. So, he forces his face to stay neutral and to pretend this isn't embarrassing as Hell.

"Wait, your wings come out when you're _excitado_?"

"Um, apparently, yes."

Later, Michael will thank the universe in general (but not Dad because fuck this wing boner problem) for Ella being too confused to parse his words carefully. If she'd been paying full scientist levels of attention then, she'd have known he had never experienced such, ahem, complications before. 

That he was in a weird way as pure as the driven snow.

"I'm so sorry! Is this...oh, I made it weird," she says.

He glares at her. "I'm the one with a forty-foot wingspan threatening the living room, the tree, and all your ornaments.

Lopez squeaks "Forty?" and there is a look on her face he can't quite place, a mix of aroused and blue screen of death, perhaps. Michael is both flattered and put off by it. 

Not sure if she's dating him for option #4 - that she is so religious and she has him confused with the hype about him. Because he is many things, but he is no longer the Prince of Heaven, if he ever truly were, and he was never a saint. Ella has said she's in it for him, but he worries she won't be, that the divinity---tarnished as it is in him---will end up attracting her more.

"You saw them the one time," he counters.

"Yeah, but I didn't realize how big they really were." She blanches. "Wait, so is that the angelic equivalent of a dick pic? Just whip out the wings?"

"No! Fuck no!" he stammers. "I just...they're a part of me. They're like arms." Or they were, but he's never made out with anyone before, and he didn't know they weren't just limbs and expressions of his divinity.

That they could be oh so much more. 

Lopez's head bobs and she is so very very red-cheeked. Michael's not sure if he's glad or not that she's feeling as awkward as he is, but maybe misery loves company.

"Oh, okay. I...do you want to take a break? I'm serious, you can shower and calm down. I'll get the tree trimmed more. Meet back here in 30?"

Michael nods and is grateful for an excuse to escape. He stands and clutches the pillow to his crotch even if it's obvious what's happened and hurries at almost Celestial speed to his bathroom.

Fuck, he can't even trim a tree right.

**

The coldest shower he could manage for twenty minutes finally killed his erection as well as the twitching underneath his skin. It's like kissing her ignited something electric under his skin, and Michael can't quite undo it. But the cold helps. When he returns to her, his wet hair is curling up in all directions, and he's wearing a t-shirt he thinks is mostly clean (though it smells of cigar smoke from the last poker game he was at) and a long pair of checkered pajama pants. They're ones Lopez bought for their little Thanksgiving illusion. Why she thought her _abuelita_ would check dresser drawers, well, Michael does not want to know.

Honestly, it's for the best, because usually he has his khakis for the day and sleeps naked at night. 

But right now being as naked as the day he was Created, which would be no bueno as Lopez likes to say.

He smiles shyly at Ella as she finishes setting two fresh mugs of cocoa (and when the fuck did that get in his cupboard and what else has she put there) on the coffee table by the sofa. He notices that the layer of glass balls, bright reds, blues, and violets, have been hung on the tree. He admits they look good painfully equidistant from each other.

The only things left are the superhero ornaments and the tree topper.

He assumes it's a star. She hasn't actually opened the box for him to see.

"Hey," he says, not sure of what else to say.

She offers him a broad smile and launches into a hug around him. It should be awkward, but it's the one thing that's not, and maybe she caught him the moment they met, that odd mix of shoe-buoyed fury and soft affection. For someone else but intriguing nevertheless.

"Are you good?"

He nods even if his voice is a bit thicker when he speaks. "No wings are going to break the tree today, Lopez. Perfect is as perfect does, right?"

He has no idea where that came from, but such an asinine aphorism appeases her and, as Lopez pulls away, he's rewarded with her megawatt smile. A small, poetic part of him thinks of it as the closest to the Silver City he's probably ever allowed to see again. Then he remembers the stares of his good siblings and the millennia of jeers from his cruel ones (and fuck you too, Remiel), and realizes that smile just for him is far better than anything Heaven ever gave him.

He clamps his mouth shut, resisting the urge to tell her and wear his heart on his sleeve so nakedly.

"Dude, I was thinking that the Justice League can go in any order you like, okay?"

Michael quirks his head at her, his snark returning. "You sure? I don't want to place Superman wrong."

"Nah, it should be some fun. Just sip cocoa and decorate the tree the normal way. If something's too close together, well, it's not a quiz, right?"

He leans down and kisses her cheek. "No...I thank you."

"Why?"

"For easing up. I haven't ever done this before, so it's nice to just do it however. No perfection."

She snorts. "Deal, and if I get too geometrical about it, just knock me out of it."

"Deal."

They don't talk for a while, just get to trimming. Michael takes the higher branches and has made short work of the heroes he knows off the top of his head like Wonder Woman and Batman and the aforementioned Superman. He doesn't keep track on the multiverse. Not his thing. Azrael does for fun; he can tell. But he knows the big things, and he's seen a few movies on cable while on earth this time around. Ella's gravitated to whatever the fuck the B-team is with colorful spandex clad heroes all over and he has no clue who is who.

She stops before putting the last one on the highest branch she can reach. This one looks like Wonder Woman, kind of, but he knows he put that one up. He sees the same gold lasso and bracelets but there are differences too with the pants on the figure and the slightly darker hint to its skin.

"Who's that?"

"Oh, she's new! Her name is Yara Flor and she's gonna be Wonder Girl in the comics and TV now. I just got this as this year's commemorative."

She's stretching hard to reach the high tip, and Michael reaches out his hand. "Can I help?"

Ella nods. "Sure, use that height, dude."

He snorts but takes no real offense and places it near the top, close to the Batman and not too far from Superman. It's probably too close to actual Wonder Woman (fuck if he knows the name). Michael turns back to her and expects Ella to correct him, get out a ruler even to measure, but she's sniffling a little, and he wonders what he did wrong.

"Did I mess up?"

"No, I just...the last two years have been messed up. First I was on the outs with, uh, your dad. Then, I was hurting so bad cause of my break up..." One day, Michael will have to tell her he knows about that asshole Pete, but now isn't the time. "...and then I found out you all were really real like a week ago while still trying to go to church in the interim and feeling lost. I just...I used to see myself as good, you know? But I'm not sure I'm as good as I want to be."

"You wish you were as good as Wonder Girl up there?"

She nods. "Yeah, like Latina superheroine. That would be badass, right?"

Michael chuckles. "I dunno. I leave most heroics and everything else to Amenadiel and Sam. That's their thing, unless they absolutely need a third." He scowls at her. "I do not do spandex."

"Technically, Batman has this next level body armor like Kevlar and---"

"Yeah, no, Lopez." He reaches out and strokes her cheek. Then, he hedges a lot because she's human and she's trying, and divinity hasn't broken her yet. Nothing has broken her yet no matter what she thinks. But he can't explain the multiverse quite yet. "That's not true. It's all gods and aliens and billionaires." He shrugs, and gestures vaguely to himself with his bad hand. "Even Celestials or demons like Maze. We have things that insulate us from the pain. Maybe not always well, but it's there. I think you're a hero for how you try. How you never stop. Sam and Chloe Decker and the douche---"

She chuckles at that. "You and Lucifer still have a lot in common!"

"No, we do not."

Lies. They do and it eats at them both.

"Totally do. No _mentiras_ there."

"But..." he continues. "They wouldn't know who to arrest without you or have the proof to make it stick. You're amazing, chica. I think so at least, and not to brag, but I've seen a lot of the universe, so I'd know."

She grins up at him, and the brilliance of her smile is marred just a bit by the cocoa on her lip. Damn if he doesn't want to lick it off. 

"You're smoother than you think, Mikey."

"Maybe," he says, giving in to his wants and kissing the chocolate mustache off her lip. "Now, what goes on top?"

He eyes the box, worrying that it's an angel. If only because he needs her to see him first, to deal with the divinity bomb, and understand that what she's seen of him really is him. The wings he barely uses and the legacy he tries to ignore just aren't. The First Born revels in it. Sam rails against it. Michael buries it and tries to survive.

He is always trying to do that.

She beams at him and hurries over to it. He holds his breath as she opens and then blinks, both dumbfounded and relieved to see the Superman shield or emblem or whatever in all its red and yellow glory before him.

"Are you serious, Lopez?"

"What? Is it too profane?"

"Not by half," he says, smirking at her. "Would that it were. And I guess I'm gonna get the step stool out and do it for you."

"Nine feet is pretty high, dude."

He makes a show of grumbling to himself and gets on the step ladder, his shoulders shaking when Ella takes it upon herself to pinch his ass. She's luck they didn't lose the whole tree that way. However, he recovers and places the tree topper on. He has to admit that it reflects the strands of lights brilliantly across the room. After he resettles himself on the ground, Lopez comes and slips under his good arm.

"What do you think?"

"You, chica, are possibly the biggest nerd on the planet."

"Yup, that's what you signed up for."

He thinks of all the bobbleheads she has not yet moved out, and that he fears she will never move out. Then, he kisses her again, smirking against her lips, when he gooses her ass and she yips next to him.

When he pulls back, he winks. "Not bad for a first tree, right?"

" _Por cierto_ , we did a good job!"

He nods to her. "Now, if you have something a bit more fun in mind, Lopez, I think I'm game."

She leads him to the couch, and they're lost together in the caress of tongues and lips and in roaming hands. And yet...

Something in the back of Michael's mind goes back to the top of the tree and that famous shield up there. Wryly, some small, mischievous part of him thinks Samael would hate it. And, for some reason, it makes him all the more ecstatic. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ella tries to introduce Michael to Christmas movies.

**Chapter Two**

Ella sighs and takes her earbuds out of her ears. She’s been at the microscope for hours, pouring over the, well, excrement and sewer water samples from their latest case---a body dumped down deep in the sewage out by the Santa Monica Pier. It’s not the smell that’s getting to her. After all, by now, she’s gotten used to the scent of almost everything. It’s more that she’s not finding anything useful. The body’s prints didn’t help either. Whoever the victim is, well, she never had her prints in the system.

Ella hates hitting dead ends. She wants to always be able to find the angle no one else can. Right now, all she wants is rest, but she’s not sure she can get that much either. Guilt is gnawing at her. This victim, like all the others in her career, is someone’s daughter or sister…maybe even someone’s mom. She owes the woman, but right now she’s hitting a major wall. At least she has Friday night to look forward to, and she intends to introduce Michael to some of her favorite Christmas specials from when she was a kid and even maybe a schmulzy made-for-TV movie. Won’t be as good for cuddling as a horror movie, not that she scares easy or the angel of fear does either, but she’ll improvise and make sure to add extra hot cocoa liberally.

She leans back in her chair and cracks her neck. In fact, she’s rubbing at the back of it when Lucifer strolls in. Ella arches an eyebrow at him and at the massive frozen coffee with extra whipped cream he’s carrying. The rainbow sprinkles are a great touch, and she’ll so be sure to snag it from him, but she won’t give the Devil---the literal, _freaking_ Devil---what he wants. In the two weeks since Thanksgiving, Ella might have been giving him a bit of the silent treatment.

Oh, she lets him come into her lab to play with his phone or escape from Dan, but she doesn’t gab at him. Ella’s hurt. A lot. She can’t get her hands on Azrael, and she wants to. _Badly_. How dare Rae Rae change her whole life at eight on what? A _jodido_ whim? But she can’t get her to come by so Ella is taking her frustration with Celestial shenanigans out on the gang instead. With Lucifer, it’s the just business demeanor. With Amenadiel, Ella’s made up Christmas errands she has to run till the New Year so she can’t show up for Charlie’s regular tutoring sessions until then.

Both brothers should get to stew on it just a little.

They’ve been lying to her for years, and it really hurts. It’s so unfair. She’s not as mad at Chloe or Linda, as the Celestial secrets aren’t entirely theirs to give, but Lucifer…he’s been playing with her for a while now, and that’s not okay.

Lucifer offers her his usual debonair smile, but it fades a bit when she answers his gaze with a stony one of her own. “Uh, Miss Lopez, I was figuring you’d be parched after spending so much time pouring over our latest case. I wasn’t wrong, was I?”

Ella takes the drink and sips it carefully. She’s mad at Lucifer, not upset enough to give herself a brain freeze from drinking too fast. It _is_ good, and damn Lucifer for knowing her well enough to butter her up with something that tastes like sin on her tongue, but that much figures too, doesn’t it?

“Miss Lopez,” Lucifer starts again, drumming his fingers on the metal lab table at the heart of her space. “I can’t help but notice that you’ve been rather quiet around me of late.”

“You saying I talk too much, dude?”

Lucifer shakes his head and seems to flounder around her. Understandable. She can’t think of many times he’s even tried apologizing to Chloe, and she’s rarely merited the treatment. Tough. Satan’s gonna have to figure out how to treat her better.

“No, of course not or not any more than I talk.”

“Guilty,” she says, shrugging and trying not to think of Pete, even over a year later and all his pronouncements. Yeah, she speaks too much, but she doesn’t have darkness in her, at least not the same type as Pete. She’s not a murderer, just apparently an angel magnet. Ella’s not sure how to reconcile that either, not yet. “But you can go if you want. The coffee drink is nice. Bring some for Dan and Chloe too?”

“Just for you. I thought it was time to catch up,” he admits, and the drumming of his fingers hits a more frenetic pace.

Ella shrugs. Let him struggle. He’s _earned_ this. It’s been almost five years between them, and she should have been told. Fuck, when she was struggling with her faith a little “Oh yeah, I’m _that_ Lucifer, see my wings” would have saved her a fuck ton of pain.

She is many things, but right now _not_ _amused_ is chief among them.

“That was nice.” She takes another sip. “Did you need anything else?”

“We haven’t had time to talk.”

“I think you mentioned that, and we’re talking now, so I think we’re good.”

“Miss Lopez, I can’t help but notice you’ve been frosty with me. Did I do something wrong? Have I erred in some way? Granted, I’m usually flawless, but even the Devil can make mistakes.”

She rolls her eyes. “Ha, cause method, am I right?”

He sighs and shakes his head. “Yes, that bit. Surely _method_.”

“Are you though?” she asks. Ella knows now and playing with him has its perks. “Method I mean. After all, Los Angeles is a weird town, right? City of Angels and where better to have literal ones.”

“Exactly,” he says, beaming unsteadily back at her. “A perfectly suitable place for even a Fallen one to settle.”

“Uh-huh,” she replies, setting her drink down. “You sure you’re Old Scratch then?”

“Yup, been that way since the beginning of time, well, not the Devil but a Celestial of course.”

“Prove it,” she says leaning across the table and glaring up at him.

“Beg your pardon?”

She shrugs again, trying to play it all cool even if she’s practically shaking with anger and frustration. “You’re the Devil. Do something. I dunno, like in _The Exorcist_ the bed levitates and pea soup and all that other _mierda_. You could do that, right? Get a little telekinesis out there?”

“Wouldn’t that be ‘a vulgar display of power?’” Lucifer asks, doing a decent impression of the croaky voice of Mercedes McCambridge from the old movie.

“Well, if you’re the Devil, and after all this time, you should show me the goods. I’ve been taking a lot on faith while we work together. So, I dunno, show me some horns or something.”

Lucifer stands taller and brings a hand to his chest. “I’m offended, Miss Lopez. I hardly have horns. That’s just slander.”

“You must do something, right? Put up or shut up, Luce.”

He frowns at her and then narrows his eyes. “What would you even want? I…you’ve been spending an awful lot of time with my twin, haven’t you? What has he been filling your head with?”

She shrugs again and stomps back to her microscope. “I dunno, Lucifer, maybe he’s telling me the truth lately. Or maybe, you’ve just been saying ‘I’m the Devil’ enough that I’m starting to believe it. We had a murder massacre at the Mayan, a crazy set of broken out windows at the precinct a year ago that no one remembers _seeing happen_ , and a crime scene that was full of giant, white feathers. What am I supposed to think?”

“You now that I never liked you spending time with Michael. He’s a liar and a ruffian and---”

“We’re friends,” Ella hedges. She knows that Lucifer doesn’t like Michael and vice-versa. Neither have really told her the whys or hows behind it, but she doesn’t want to admit she’s dating Michael after a whole couple weeks because she’s not quite sure what a Devil going postal will do. And she’s not sure Michael wants his brothers to know yet since it’s all so new. “Maybe he tells me the things I should know.”

“Miss Lopez?”

“Look, I have a lot to analyze so maybe you can just leave, Lucifer. If you’re not going to show me anything _real_ , then just get back to _not_ doing filing work with Chloe.”

“I don’t understand.”

She turns to glare at him from over her microscope. “Oh, but I think you do, dude. Like I said, _muestramé_. Either put up or shut the fuck up.”

**

Michael is confused by the knock on his door. It’s not a night that Ella’s scheduled to drop by. As far as he knows, she’s working on a tough case and they have plans for Friday night and a movie marathon he’s leery of but can’t be _worse_ than more sci-fi crap, can it? However, as the knocking grows frantic on the other side of his door, Michael figures it’s not Lopez. She’d be chattering on the other side by now. Rae Rae---who has been avoiding him---would have just swooped on in. Maybe it’s Maze as they tend to bump into each other out and about, but she’d just kick the door down and leave him to figure out how to pay for it.

Michael doesn’t really have friends so…

He sighs and shuffles his way to the door, groaning loudly when he looks through the peephole and finds his asshole of a twin. Samael must be in some kind of a chastened mood at least as Michael still has a front door. He has no illusions if he leaves his brother waiting much longer that he’ll have a door after that.

And that’s a fucking waste of money.

Grumbling again, Michael yanks his door open and crowds the threshold. “Sam, hi, not welcome here. Shove back off to your little girlfriend Dad made you.” He can’t completely resist digging at Samael though. It’s just how he’s natured. “Unless you’ve done something to truly piss her off. Maybe your pet detective moved on to greener pastures? Couldn’t blame her if she did. Parboiled probably doesn’t appeal much.”

That is, as many things in Michael’s life, a huge mistake.

His brother is on him in an instant, and Michael finds himself pinned against his far wall and choking in his twin’s grasp.

“You don’t get to utter word one about her,” Samael snapps, eyes red and the hint of flames licking his face surely not Michael’s imagination.

He rolls his eyes and coughs out a few words around Sam’s iron grip. “Let go!”

“You’ve been mucking about in my life, and I am _far_ from amused, Michael,” Samael says, but he relents and Michael falls to his feet. His bad leg gives out from under him, and he lands hard on his tailbone and glares up at Samael with his own eyes glowing as fiercely as his brother’s. A gold for his twin’s crimson.

“I think I don’t do jack shit near your life and haven’t for the better part of a year. Brother.” He tries to get to his feet, but his right leg has decided it wants to do fuck all to help him. After a few, pathetic minutes, Michael stops bothering and just leans against the wall. He doesn’t let the heat of his gaze abate, but it’s a futile gesture and both of them know it.

Oh dear Dad does Sam know it as he practically preens before Michael, straightening his collar and everything else. “You just take a load off then, Mikey. Don’t get up on my account.”

“Fuck you.”

“What a mouth on you.”

Michael’s eyes finally have the heat leech from them, but he doesn’t drop the hatred in his gaze. If anything, his loathing for Samael ratchets up. As always. “I haven’t gone near your detective or your shrink. I’ve left things as they were and stayed clear of your and Amenadiel’s racket.”

“Ella Lopez. Explain.”

Michael groans again, and _of course_ , Lopez must have gotten tired of giving Sam the cold shoulder at work and apparently plotting a prank on him and just flat out told him that she _knew_. “We’re museum buddies. We go a few times a month, but you knew that.”

“I thought Amenadiel and I were quite clear that you were to back away from Miss Lopez and not play around with her. After Pete, she hardly needs another lowlife breaking her fragile sense of self-esteem apart.”

Michael yanks at the collar of his turtleneck, which he suddenly finds cloying. “I am a lowlife. I don’t deny that, but I’m not hurting her, not at all. She asked me for a favor to be a buffer with her family at Thanksgiving.”

“Her family was in town?”

“Do you even care? You’re busy these days with all your bullshit with Chloe Decker. Ella needed someone to help distract her family from pressuring her to go home to Detroit. Mission fucking accomplished.”

Samael frowns and finally takes in the decorations in Michael’s living room. Honestly, there aren’t many, but while Ella has moved out the photoshopped pics (although he’s kept a real framed one of them from the last trivia night they went to) and most of her collected baubles, there are still a half dozen bobbleheads, mostly Marvel movie crap, and a couple posters on his wall. Both the posters are _Star Trek_ but fuck if Michael knows which movies in particular.

“What in Dad’s name is going on here? These aren’t yours, unless your aesthetic has changed drastically, Mikey.”

“It’s _Michael_ ,” he corrects as if it means anything. Not like he’ll ever deign to call Samael by his effect moniker either. “And I don’t know what you mean.”

“And I suppose that’s your Thor Funko Pop then?”

Michael feels his cheeks flare red. “No, not exactly, and how do you know one Marvel superhero crap thing from another.” He supposes he’s lucky that Samael hasn’t gotten as far as his living room and the tree that’s pure comic book craziness. It’s even more obvious he hardly had a hand in it.

“Miss Lopez and I have had a few movie nights and the urchin has started graduating from princess fare to this. Besides, Thor is rather lovely, isn’t he?”

Michael rolls his eyes. He has no ill will toward his brother’s general manwhore ways. That doesn’t matter. If only his twin was as live and let live about Michael existing at all. That said, Michael isn’t as _flexible_ as his twin. “Yeah, sure, whatever. What does it matter what I have in my house, which you weren’t invited to by the way?”

“Because these are Miss Lopez’s aren’t they.” Sam stalks around the room with a fluid grace Michael would almost kill for before settling on the frame photo of him and Lopez out at trivia. “Is she living here?”

Michael shakes his head and scrubs a bit at the scruff on his chin. He’s more unkempt than Samael, and his five o’clock shadow has long since graduated to scruffy beard. Lopez mocks it sometimes as “hipster,” but he has fuck all idea what that actually means. “No, but she visits sometimes, especially since her dumbass chicken hates me and squawks the second I step into her place. It’s quieter here, but she thought I needed to ‘brighten it up.’ Now I have half a dozen superhero hunks of plastic. Happy?”

“I told you to leave her alone.”

“And I haven’t hurt her,” Michael replies finally and oh-so-slowly getting to his feet. He’s winded by the time he’s up again and leaning heavily on the wall for help, but he’s still able to face his brother better and the even ground is what matters, not how he got to it. “We hang out. We’re friends.” Because there is _no way_ he’s telling Samael that they’re dating. That will end with him smushed into an Altoids box. When and if they get to that point, full disclosure will come from Lopez, as Sam wouldn’t hurt him if Ella gave the order.

It’s a bit pathetic, but the Devil is a fuck ton stronger than he is, so Michael’s got a vested interest in keeping all limbs and wings and skin as intact as it can be around his twin. Two worse times have taught him that much.

“Yes, _friends_. And what have you told her?”

Michael, despite how shittily everything has gone, can’t resist baiting his brother a little. “Gee Sam, I dunno, what have you told her?”

“It’s _Lucifer_.”

Michael rubs at his bum shoulder. “You’re no Lightbringer to me, and you never were. So, _Samael_ , what is it you’re really worried about. Lopez and I have been hanging out deliberately the better part of a year, and she’s not hurt. I’m not Pete Daly, and I have no fucking interest in doing anything to her at all.” He lets out a ragged breath and maybe says too much as an afterthought. “I never wanted to hurt her. I just want to make her smile.”

Samael’s eyes flash red again and he takes a step before forcing himself back to his corner of the room. “You can’t make _anyone_ happy. Eventually, you’ll fuck it all up like you always do and leave the pieces to me and Amenadiel.”

“Who are you criticizing, twin? Me or you?”

“I’m quite serious.”

“So am I,” Michael replies, letting his head loll against the wall behind him. “You want to know what I told Ella? I told her the _truth_. She needed it.”

“I didn’t give you permission to do that.”

“Newsflash, I don’t need it. She had a terrible Thanksgiving and…did you know that Rae Rae has been visiting her since she was a child?” Michael expects Sam to be shocked, but it angers him further when his brother just nods, a stony expression on his face. “You did know?”

“Not until a couple years back. Azrael and I hardly talk, but yes, I knew.”

“Did you know she told her family it was a _ghost_ she was seeing because Rae Rae lied about what she was? Do you have any idea how crazy they think she is?”

“She’s not!”

Michael sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. Sometimes Sam can be so very thick-headed. “No shit, Sherlock, but her family _thinks_ she is and they treat her like crap. I spent half of thanksgiving watching her mother and her idiot brother, Ricardo, tear her down, and part of the day shoving them out of my house. It wasn’t fair to let her think she was crazy and since Rae Rae wasn’t around to fix her own mess or _yours_ , I just told her.”

Sam arches an eyebrow at him but stays unerringly still. Michael goes as steady in his own corner. For all of Samael’s tendencies to run off half-cocked and to lash out in fits of anger, well, he’s also his most dangerous the quieter he gets. Michael should know.

“You told her?”

“I showed her exactly what you should have years ago, and you’re welcome by the way. I don’t necessarily love showing my piece of shit wings around if I don’t have to.”

Sam’s eyes blaze for just a moment again, a warning crimson that still unsettles Michael even though he’s both spied it in L.A. and the few times over the millennia he’s helped Amenadiel shoo the Devil back to Hell. It’s so not Celestial that it leaves him wonder exactly what his twin is now.

“You seemed more than happy to do so with Daniel.”

“Your douche,” Michael replies, letting the word fall heavily between them. “was more than useful in my plans at the time. I needed him. This was different. Lopez should have been told. The minute you knew Rae Rae had been fucking with her, you should have explained it to her. That was wrong, Sam, and you know it.”

His twin makes a fuss of adjusting the onyx ring on his right hand before granting Michael eye contact again. Oh Samael and his tells, his little ways to avoid eye contact.

“She wasn’t ready.”

“ _You_ weren’t. So, yeah, she knows. You deal with it however you want to. I figure there’s a lot of stuff you should be explaining to her by now.”

A muscle in Samael’s neck cords up before he speaks again. “Miss Lopez doesn’t seem interested in talking much with me. She’s been rather short of late, and I---”

“Yeah, I know that deal. You lie and it’s easy or even fun at first. Eventually, though, it all tends to blow up in your face. I’ve definitely been there and more than once.”

“I didn’t lie. I never do!”

Michael laughs and the bitterness creeps into every tone of his voice as he does. “Of course you did. _Omission_ , Samael, is all you do. I thought after the truth about Lilith came out or my little reveal to that cop idiot or even the miracle status for your pet…I thought you’d get that you can lie pretty fucking good by just leaving the right details out. That you _have_ been doing just that.” He shakes his head and starts to turn back to his kitchen. “I was right all along. The person you lie the most to really is yourself.”

His twin’s hand is on his bad shoulder in an iron grip. It takes Michael everything he has not to yelp at the pain. He will not give his brother the satisfaction.

“I see, but what is between myself and Miss Lopez is truly between us. They are hardly your concern. You win again, get to pull out a big reveal to one of my friends and cock up my life. Are you pleased?”

He pulls away from his twin or tries to, but the Devil’s grip is beyond forceful. Michael stops yanking but arches his head over his shoulder to glare back at his brother. “It wasn’t about you, _Lucifer_. It hasn’t been in over a year. Lopez is…” _complicated_. Michael hardly has a death wish, but he knows if he mentions they’re dating or something like it that Samael will end him right there. Besides, that’s something for Lopez to let the Scooby Gang know when and if she ever feels like it. He won’t take that right away from her. “…Ella is something else. She was hurting and she didn’t deserve to feel insane anymore. I did what anyone else should have done.”

Sam finally lets him go and Michael stumbles a few steps forward but doesn’t fall this time.

His twin goes back to the super fastidious act and brushing lint from a lapel that is spotless. “Well, then, doesn’t that just explain everything.”

“I think if you want Lopez to start talking to you, then you owe her some honesty for once. Otherwise get out of my house.”

Technically. He did scare people out of it, but, you know, they were gonna move anyway and technicalities were fine. He still had the damn deed.

“Whatever you two have…this game is old. You should move on and leave her be.”

Michael rubs at his face again and shakes his head. “Not gonna happen. Now, you have a whole way overpriced tourist trap of a club to sulk at and a penthouse. Maybe you can lick your wounds there, asshole.”

“We’re not done talking about Miss Lopez. Amenadiel and I were kind enough not to end you for messing with her earlier. I’m asking you to drop whatever farce you’ve concocted. If you hurt her---”

“I think you and Rae Rae already did a fucking bang up job of that.” Michael stalks to his front door and opens it. “Now, get the fuck out.”

**

Ella is quiet before him, and Michael doesn’t think that this movie night is working out the way she anticipated when she first suggested a Christmas film festival. At that time, she’d been babbling away happily about a half dozen titles he had no clue or care about from _Home Alone_ (and how is that about Christmas) to _The Muppet’s Christmas Carol_. However, they’ve settled instead onto the sofa with their cups of cocoa rapidly cooling in their hands and something so gratingly banal on the TV before him, that Michael has half a mind to just kick a hole through it.

Some clearly made for TV catastrophe with a budget of three dollars and the cliched journey of a female executive to find the meaning of Christmas by apparently marrying the first guy in Podunk she meets.

Riveting.

But Lopez has been watching the screen as if it were the most fascinating thing ever (it’s far from) and sniffling a little. The noise isn’t something he’s used to hearing from her. Oh, he has at Thanksgiving and he really loathes Raquel. If they were in Detroit, he’d be tempted to visit Lopez’s mom just enough to give her _real_ nightmares. But she’d been doing better since he showed her his wings and at least Ella realized she wasn’t crazy.

 _Had never been crazy_.

And when he gets his hands on Rae Rae, he’s absolutely gonna kill her. Okay, not literally. He’s not evil. But he’s going to scream. _A lot_.

Michael turns off the television just as the idiot lead character is seriously contemplating marrying someone she’s known for about two weeks (bad idea totally). That’s enough to snap Lopez at least a little out of her stupor.

“ _Cabrón!_ I was watching that.”

“Yes, I’m sure it’s ending is mysterious and unpredictable. It’s a regular Chris Nolan film, Lopez.”

She glares at him, but the effect is marred by her reddened eyes, Michael is immediately chastened. He wraps an arm around her shoulders and brings her close into his chest. “Hey, what’s up?”

“It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine. You promised me something watchable for ‘tradition’s sake,’” Michael adds a bit of air quotes with his bad hand on that point. “and we’ve sat through at least two of these _Hallmark_ things. Maybe three? I don’t know they all blur together. How many chicks have given up their careers today?”

She nudges his side, and he rolls with the motion. Lopez is many things, but she’s no miracle, and he’s still an archangel. If he didn’t try and soften her blow, then she’d crack an elbow. “That’s not funny! These are warm, like a blanket.”

“And cloying, like being suffocated,” he corrects, stroking her cheek. “Come on, you promised singing frog puppets and something called a ‘grinch.’ What’s actually up. You and my idiot twin still fighting?”

Lopez sighs and doesn’t say anything at first. That’s how Michael _knows_ he’s hit pay dirt. She hardly has a quiet moment. He likes that about her. He’s not usually a liar around her, and between Samael always being on and Rae Rae’s tendency to ramble, Michael is more than used to waiting quietly for someone else to finish (or at least slow down in Samael’s case) on the talking.

This silence from her is unnerving.

“Is it that bad?” he prods. “You get along with him. I don’t know how you got him to act fraternal but good on you. Except for the Azrael, you’d be the first he really seems to give a shit about in that way. Well…I guess he and Amenadiel are all buddy-buddy too, but that was a total surprise coming, let me tell ya.”

Lopez sighs and sips her drink before answering. “It’s just weird at the station. I was really gonna prank him at first. I still might.”

“Please let me help you. I have ideas about all sorts of things. He’s not vulnerable around Chloe Decker any longer but I still have thoughts.”

Ella blinks up at him. “What?”

“Chloe Decker---literal, actual, Dad-ordered miracle. For a while, he was vulnerable around her. Now he’s not. I suspect it has more to do with how angels work or, well, don’t exactly work than it does with how Chloe was made, but either way, Sam’s got less of an Achilles Heel than he used to.”

Lopez looks up at him with comically wide eyes. Damn if they’re not beautiful even a bit swollen from crying. “What?”

“I forgot that? Sorry, there are a lot of Cliff’s Notes, and you’ve had so much on your plate for a pretty damn long time, Lopez. I don’t know exactly why Dad thought Samael merited his own special girlfriend present. Not one clue. But He asked it be so, Amenadiel did the blessing, and here Chloe is, as annoying and dogged as ever.”

“Whoa. Wait so does Chloe have powers to? I mean half the people I know are angel or part angel or even a demon. What can Chloe do?”

“Nothing as far as I know. Well, she doesn’t fall for Sam’s line of crap, so technically she can’t be _desired_ by him. His powers won’t work on her at all. The vulnerability thing really was more psychosomatic on Sam’s end. I think.”

“You think?” And she’s sitting up now, her cocoa forgotten on the end table.

Her eyes are gleaming up at him with rapt and hungry fixation. Part of Michael loathes it because he desperately needs her to see him as just Samael’s grouchy misanthrope of a brother. Not a Celestial, not some mythical being who’s larger than life. On the other hand, if she’s turned her scientific scrutiny toward him, then that means she’s feeling better. At least a little.

“Angels…we self-actualize and not in a California guru bullshit way. Our subconscious can dictate what we literally are and what we can do. Sam felt vulnerable emotionally around Chloe so for a while the Devil could actually get stabbed or shot by mortal weapons. Total downgrade. I…Amenadiel accidentally froze all of time in the world because he was worked up about Chucky.” Michael sighs and offers Lopez a bit more truth this time around. “Okay, so I made him worried about Chucky, but I didn’t think he could do more than stop time in L.A. I didn’t realize quite how strong he was or, maybe, being scared for his brat makes him.”

Lopez slaps his shoulder lightly, and she’s really not getting that archangel part yet. “Charlie’s really cute!”

“Yeah, sure, whatever. Anyway, that’s what happens. You can’t help it, not really. Your deep seated issues do it for you.”

“What has your subconscious done?”

He holds up his right arm and squeezes his fingers as best as he can into a fist. “Sometimes, I wonder why I can’t heal. Yeah, could be even odds Sam’s just that strong and really tore the fuck out of me. Maybe Dad doesn’t and never wanted me to. Sometimes I worry that deep down I do deserve this and my mind won’t let me heal, which fuck that because trying to get my subconscious to cooperate isn’t feasible. You can’t just talk to your inner most thoughts and get them all aligned on the right page. Doesn’t really work that way in practice.”

Michael doesn’t want to disappoint her, but he’s pretty much _only_ good at disappointing others.

“Could you get better?”

“Haven’t since before there was a human race, so I have fuck all idea how. Maybe, maybe not. But yeah, Chloe used to be Sam’s Kryptonite. Now, not so much, however that happened. Mind over matter or just being a miracle fun side effect.”

She nods and snuggles against him, and Michael welcomes the warmth of her body pressed against his own. “So no powers for her otherwise?”

“Nope.”

“And Linda’s normal?”

“Far as I know she’s human. I mean, so is Eve, but she’s _that_ Eve so she’s been around a while. No powers, just as fragile as any mortal woman is.”

Lopez frowns up at him, a little wrinkle appearing in her forehead between her brows. Michael wants to kiss it badly in that moment, to banish it away and get back to a holiday mood. “What about me? Am I normal?”

“I believe you are. Amenadiel only blessed one person. Gabriel has been asked _never_ to do it again after he quite literally fucked it up the first time he was asked. Why would you even ask?”

“Because there has to be a reason my life’s so messed up. Rae Rae never showed herself to any other humans, right?”

“And _nope_. Just you after all this time.”

“And then she steered me into the path of the Devil and the first angel ever and the only Nephilim _and_ Saint Michael.”

“Not that exciting, not…kicking your own brother into Hell really isn’t the amazing and uplifting moral victory the Church PR makes it sound like, trust me.” Michael looks away again and only relaxes when she squeezes his hand.

It’s the first time she’s ever reached for his bad one.

Ella eyes him, glancing quickly between their interlinked hands and his face. “Is this okay? I should have asked.”

“No,” he says, setting his other hand over their intertwined ones. “it’s perfect. You don’t have to ask to touch me, even the weak side. I like it.”

Her cheeks color red just a bit, and it’s rewarding to find her flustered all over again. “I’m sorry. That must have sucked.”

“And how,” he says, moving on. “But let’s…you asked the questions and this is about you. So, as far as I know, you’re perfectly normal, Lopez. Maybe too sunny and kind for your own damn good, but you’re just human. It’s limiting, I know, but you’re better than most Celestials I know so you get a break.”

“Ha-ha.” She sighs and sets her head back on his shoulder. “But Rae Rae… _all_ of this has to mean something, doesn’t it? Maybe your Dad just set it in motion for reasons.”

“I hope not. I don’t need Father fucking around in my life the way he seems to enjoy doing it with Sam and his pet detective. Really, really don’t. I think this just happened, and I like it that way.”

“Maybe, but there has to be something fucked up in me, right?”

Michael startles a bit and drops his left hand from over top of the others. “Why? Lopez, you heard me, right? You’re like a combination of the Energizer Bunny and a Care Bear. Nauseating in its way, but about as threatening too. You’re too good to be hanging around me at all.”

“But I’m not. Not really. You don’t know all the things that happened this last year or so or why my last boyfriend isn’t around.”

Michael wants to go back badly to the days where he lied. Oh he still lies a lot. What is poker if not bluffing? But he doesn’t like lying to Lopez, and everyone else has done it to her for too damn long. It’s tearing her to pieces. And Samael and his pet humans can’t really even see it.

Or they find it easier to ignore it.

Even Michael’s not sure which is the true reason.

He pulls away from her and to the far end of the sofa. “Look, Ella, I…you’re probably going to leave after I say this, but I owe it to you too.”

“Oh, so I’m _not_ normal. Called it! Pete said I had a darkness in me and I haven’t felt normal in so long and---”

Michael holds up his good hand to urge her into silence. “No, but I…I don’t just elicit fears. I can _feel_ them whether people mean to broadcast them or not. It’s harder from my siblings but I can still feel it. With humans, it just leaks off you all so much. All the fucking time even when I don’t care or want to feel it.”

She stiffens before him and her eyes dart around the room, between the tree, the darkened TV set, and him. Though they never quite meet his eyeline. “All of them?”

“No, sometimes I get surface things, like that time you were over and saw a roach in my bathroom. Sometimes I get the deep shit, yeah. I know about Pete Daly. I know how close he came to killing you, and I promise you, he won’t ever come close to hurting you again.”

Lopez bolts up and starts to pace. The little elf hat she wore for tonight’s rapidly dwindling festivities jingles as she moves; it makes everything seem less dire than it is. “What did you do?”

“Honestly, Sam visited him first at his holding cell. I stopped by after I read all he’d done off you---and I didn’t pry, I’m just not like my brothers. I can’t turn this off. _Ever_ \---but I scared him too. Pete’s coherent…sometimes. But he’s definitely convinced Hell is coming for him.” Michael shrugs. “Can’t say he’s wrong. I ever go back to being The Great Judge, and there’s no way he’s getting into the Silver City. He’s Sam’s and for once I’m glad about that.”

“But you knew? Did you know the whole time?”

“First time I bumped into you at La Brea, yeah. I know everyone’s darkest secrets, the things they never want to share with everyone. Their weaknesses. All that baggage gets to live in my head. All my brothers and sisters…everything they’re scared shitless Dad will find out about or probably already _does know_ about…yeah, I get that too. I never asked for it, and I try to block it out, I do, but it feels impossible most days. I can’t ever stop how I make others feel, and I can’t block all of it out. I don’t want to know these things, usually, Lopez. It made my whole family nervous to be near me long before I ever had my wings ruined.”

Lopez stops pacing. She doesn’t get near the couch again, but she doesn’t grab her coat and rush for the door either. “Do you know all my fears?”

“No. I try my hardest around you to block it out, but Pete’s so fucking strong in your head. It’s why I visited him, why I made sure he knew how literally, cosmically fucked he truly is. I never read the fears of being crazy off of you. I had no idea till your family blurted it out. I’m sorry they did, and I’m so sorry that happened to you. But, no Ella, as far as I know, you’re just normal and Rae Rae is an idiot. There’s no grand plan for it, and she never should have appeared to you at all. I wish she hadn’t since it bothers you so much.”

She frowns and edges toward him and finally sits back down on the sofa. “I don’t know if I regret. I’m just frustrated. I see a million little off ramps. I didn’t have to go into forensics. I didn’t have to go to California. I didn’t have to transfer to Lucifer’s precinct. I didn’t…but Rae Rae suggested and things just snowballed at work and it all ended up with me making yet another bad dating decision---”

“Should I be offended?” Michael jokes.

“You’re still a step up from most of the _perdedors_ I’ve been with,” she admits.

“I rank higher than a serial killer and Dan Espinoza. That’s a real ego killer.”

She squeals and soon enough a pillow explodes into a flurry of feathers over his head. “You read that on me?”

“I am not picking that crap up,” Michael says. “Besides, I read it on the douche. He’s terrified Chloe will find out and castrate him. I can’t say _I’m_ not tempted.”

“Jealous?”

“No, it’s more that he used it to shut you up and try and get you not to report his ass. I just…you do deserve better in who you date, Lopez.” Michael fidgets with the hem of his turtleneck. “Honestly, you deserve a fuck ton better than me. It might be one of the few things Sam and I actually agree on. He gave me an earful when he was here last.”

“What?”

“Oh crap.”

Lopez’s expression has changed in an instant from raw and vulnerable to truly enraged. “I have four real _idiotas_ in my life who are the crappiest brothers ever. I’m frustrated with Lucifer for not telling me stuff, and I am flattered he’s always been like an actually decent big brother, but he can’t…he doesn’t get to scare off my boyfriend.”

“I didn’t confirm we were dating, mostly because then Sam would murder me. Or take the other wing and break it. Probably.”

Her arms are around him again, as tight as an anaconda, and Michael still isn’t used to how freely she gives affections and hugs. “I haven’t yet either. It’s not because I don’t want to but, yeah, I was worried Amenadiel and Lucifer would react and it would go totally FUBAR.”

“Yeah, so I need to think of a best way to fortify my house before you do.”

“Rayos.”

“No worries,” he replies, even if that’s _anything_ but true. “Still, you should date a better person, Lopez. I got kicked out of heaven at least temporarily. I don’t have a real job, and my whole family hates me.”

“Mine thinks I’m nuts.”

“Yeah, but the difference is you’re not at all, but I really am an asshole.”

She kisses him and he relaxes into the affection, not even realizing how much he’s needed it. There’s too much honesty right now, and it’s gutting him and tearing at his walls. “Yeah, but you’re more like an acquired taste. I like you a lot.”

“Thanks, but…”

“Are you gonna take my free will from me too? Lucifer goes on and on about choice and why he left home and all that other _mierda_ , but here he is trying to scare you off. Michael,” she adds, stroking his cheek, her fingers playing over the scar on his right side. “I like you too, a lot.”

“No one ever does.”

“Then they’ve been wrong. I just…man I messed tonight up. I was going to show you like eight versions of _A Christmas Carol_ and just got real sad and zoned out in front of---okay you’re right---totally shitty holiday stuff made in a factor somewhere in Canada.”

“Literally?”

“Might as well be,” Lopez adds, winking at him. “Anyway, this is…you can pick whatever I’ve got in my DVD piles. We’ll do it all up right.”

Michael smirks down at her. “Nah, Lopez, I have a better idea. We’ll do shots.”

“Um not very Christmassy.”

“I have some of that eggnog crap. Pour us each something huge and I’ll tell you how the first Christmas really went down. I mean, some angel had to announce everything to the shepherds, right?”

Her eyes grow so wide as she squeals. Again, Michael feels torn in two; part of him is wincing at the hero worship for the archangel he was and won’t ever be again and the other just is glad to see her not so upset over his idiot twin and all those years of lies. He decides to humor her, and let her pick his brain on his angel side for now.

“Are you serious? I thought it was Gabriel who did the shepherd stuff!”

Michael grins. “I told you. He was the blessing angel. How do you think Jesus got here?

“Oh so like how Amenadiel blessed Chloe’s family but with more oomph?” she asks, heading toward the kitchen.

“Nah, Gabriel took the idea of a blessing way, way too far. He slept with Mary to deliver Dad’s gift. So, you know, ‘virgin’ my ass.”

Lopez stops so fast she slides in her sock-covered feet into the kitchen island. “What the actual fuck?”

“See, now you know why you need the booze.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The precinct Christmas party leads Ella to make up with Lucifer...after a fashion.

**Chapter Three**

“You’re staring.”

Ella tries to swallow her mug of eggnog---the family friendly kind as some of the officers in the precinct are earning their chips and more power to them. It’s hard to get down and she coughs a little as Chloe glares at her from across the table. It’s all set up in the main entrance under the stairs and with the reindeer posters and the fake Saint Nick decorations and, yes, a massive tree in one corner, it feels a lot more festive than the department usually does. It’s one of those years where Hanukkah and Christmas don’t overlap, but there’s a small menorah too on a desk not too far from Dan’s own and also a Kwanzaa tableau set out.

It’s all perfectly festive, even if Ella isn’t necessarily feeling the second rotation of “Rocking around the Christmas Tree” this hour at the precinct.

“I’m not, not really.”

Chloe purses her lips and the woman really is gorgeous. Ella saw _Hot Tub High School_ once years ago on cable so all the embarrassing parts were cut out. Well, maybe not _all_ , since the part where Chloe’s character barfs chocolate cake on a guy isn’t exactly a great thing for your rep, but nothing naked for broadcast, you know? Even then, Chloe was gorgeous and Ella figures that she’d have been really famous some day if her dad hadn’t died. Time happens and a kid and the stress of one of the hardest jobs she can think of, but Chloe is still incredibly beautiful.

It makes a fuck ton of sense---miracle or not---that Lucifer was drawn to her. If someone was going to tempt the Devil, then it was going to be one Chloe Decker. 

And there Ella goes again, thinking about the miracle thing. Which is _weird_. Michael swears that Amenadiel only had to touch Chloe’s mom’s _hand_ to bless her to be fertile and Chloe’s dad took care of the rest. It was nothing like apparently how Jesus got here, and Ella is never, ever thinking of the archangel Gabriel the same way. The same archangel who apparently borrowed money from everyone and never even paid it back. The Horn of God who only seemed to lose in his gambling endeavors. And her boyfriend totally preened explaining that part to her.

Brothers.

Always a competition between them, even apparently if there were literally _hundreds_ of them.

So it’s fine. It’s normal. Totally just regular Chloe. She’s not Jesus or part-angel or has magical laser powers. But it’s hard to think about without The Big Guy directly ordering it, then her friend wouldn’t exist. Okay, so God makes sure all humans exist, but there’s something really crazy about being custom ordered and to please an (Fallen) angel no less.

“No, you are definitely staring. So, what gives? Do I have lipstick on my teeth?”

Ella blushes and bites into a sugar cookie that went way too heavily on the sugar. “No, but…look I know that Lucifer and Amenadiel knew this, but I wasn’t sure if you had heard that Michael and I are friends.” Again, not going to upset Lucifer at the precinct and end up in a shouting match or, worse, with a more mangled boyfriend tonight. Breaking everything to him if she ever bothers to do it, will take planning, and a lot of promises for him not to beat the ever-loving shit out of her boyfriend first. “We hang out a lot now, and I…well, he talks a lot.”

Chloe’s face sours. “Yeah, he shoots his mouth off and that’s his most charming characteristic.”

“Maybe, and I know there’s so much that went down when Michael first got to Los Angeles between him and his brothers that I don’t understand and _no one_ has told me. That said, at least Michael told me the truth.”

Chloe stills then and something like guilt maybe (or perhaps that’s just Ella’s wishful thinking) flashes across her face. “And what’s Michael’s _version_ of the truth. You don’t know any of the stuff he pulled, and a lot of it was really dangerous.”

She flinches at that, and it hurts. Ella isn’t stupid. She’s got terrible taste in men, Michael included, but she’s not dumb. She knows enough by now to understand when things don’t add up, when there are _holes_ in everyone else’s stories. With Mike, she knows he did things to Lucifer, that there is something that made her friend angry enough to lash out and scar his twin’s face forever. Ella’s been too chickenshit in the last two and a half weeks to have that conversation. Michael swears he’s not a killer, and that much she believes. And, ugh, that puts him ahead of Pete in her dating conga line. However, that’s not the only way you can hurt someone.

Ella should know.

“I know, and we have to talk about that some day. Not just me and him but you and me too. Chloe, _I know_.”

“About Lucifer? How he’s _the real Lucifer_?”

Ella laughs but it comes out as far more broken than she means for it to. “Yeah, that he’s the literal Devil and that I was such an idiot for so long to think that it was method acting, you know?”

Chloe stands up and scoots to the seat closest to Ella. A soft hand is on her shoulder, and Ella appreciates that. She _needs_ it because her head is spinning and spinning. Most of the time, it circles around Rae Rae and Lucifer, how could they possibly have both spent so much time misleading her. Sometimes, though, they circle back to Michael and whatever secrets are in his closet. Or even how an archangel, even one quite obviously on “timeout” as Mike calls it could find anything interesting about her. How four and a Nephilim are always around in her life, Ella really can’t fathom.

“Yeah, but if it makes you feel any better, I didn’t know until Pierce almost killed me in that shootout.”

“The feathers from nowhere make a lot more sense. Finally,” she says, grabbing another gulp of her eggnog and wishing to, well, the Big Guy that it was alcoholic. She wonders if it’s something Lucifer can do. Jesus could turn water into wine, right? Then, nah, it can’t be the same way because he wouldn’t carry a flask everywhere if he could just gin what he wanted up. And that gives her quite the idea…

“Yup, and it was a shock cause I saw…Lucifer can look a lot more like the Devil than he does here. It’s complicated, and that wasn’t the way, I think, to bring me into it. He didn’t mean for me to see, but then I freaked out and Rome---”

“And you were visiting priests, right?”

Chloe frowns at her. “That obvious?”

“It’s a place I’d go. I mean, I have sat at confession a few times since Michael told me on Thanksgiving thinking ‘Forgive me, Father, but I sometimes do bar trivia with an archangel.’” And makeout with one, but that was neither here nor there. “It’s so much that it feels overwhelming. I mean, I always believed except that one, crappy year after Charlotte was killed, but this is different. It’s like, okay, I also know the Queen of England exists, but I don’t hang out with Prince Harry.”

Chloe snorts out a laugh. “Yeah, Michael’s hardly like that. Honestly, Lucifer’s mostly just the same idiot club owner who wore me down.” The words are harsh but she recounts them with a wry admiration in her voice that makes Ella’s Deckerstar heart flutter for both of them. “There’s a lot more baggage and their dad is---”

“You’ve met God?”

Chloe quirks her head at Ella. “You have too. Remember about a year ago? The old man with the beard and who loved cheesy sweaters, voice like Amenadiel’s.”

“Oh! I thought he was just a witness.”

“Not at all, and it’s complicated. I was an atheist. Can’t be now, but I know you have a lot you believe and want to keep believing. I don’t think their dad was ever really good for Amenadiel and Lucifer, but it is what it is. He mostly leaves us alone, and I am glad about that.”

Ella frowns, and that hurts. She loves the Big Guy and she’s always drawn (almost always) strength from Mass and from interactions with her fellow parishioners. But it’s obvious all the angels she knows are messed up, and they didn’t get that way on their own. She’ll have to think about what that means for her faith later.

Like way later.

It’s like trying not to drown in the ocean in the middle of a typhoon now that she knows everything. Or, well, the answer to the biggest question of all.

“I know, but Michael’s good with me. We hang out and I just…he told me about Lucifer and Amenadiel… _all of it_. I mean, he mentioned you’re a miracle, right?”

Ella feels like an asshole the minute she mentions it. Chloe’s shoulders hunch and she doesn’t cry as she’s too tough for that most of the time, but some bit of light definitely dies from her eyes.

“I am, and that’s messed up. I didn’t ask for it, and it’s weird to know that you exist because you were made for someone else. Really weird. Sometimes Eve and I talk about it. We’re not close, but we have that one, super weird thing in common. I mean, in Eve’s case, now she has a life on her own terms with Maze. I love Lucifer, and I love being with him, but I want to know that it’s because I choose it, deep down. I have had chances to walk away a few times, like with going to Rome. Maybe I could have just never come back. I wanted to start dating him when he got back from down south---”

“Hell as family business?”

“Exactly,” Chloe fills in. “But yeah, it makes me feel a little like a puppet or an object. I’m not, but it’s a weird kick in the teeth in a way. I gave God an earful about it, and He was mostly mildly amused, like I was some pet kitten trying to scratch Him. Just some much condescension. It was awful.”

Ella leans forward and wraps Chloe in a big Lopez hug. She pats her back and lets Chloe sigh a bit before they break apart and the detective she knows best is facing her. All that calm control back in place. “I asked Michael, and this is probably really dumb, but can you do anything?”

“Lucifer’s powers don’t work on me. In a way, it’s good because I can see him exactly as he is. He can’t charm his way around me. If you’re asking if I’m suddenly psychic and able to win Powerball, no, I’m really not.”

Ella shakes her head and finishes her now far-too-warm nog. “That sucks, mi amiga. You should be able to get so much more out of the miracle deal. I mean, you’re not like a girl Jesus, but you should still get a cool power, _no ve_?”

Chloe blanches at that and swallows hard. “Maybe I don’t want to walk on water either.”

“Meh, but I’m just saying the water into wine thing could be useful. Ooh, making dinner out of like no supplies? Would have to come in handy after a long day at work!”

Chloe nods and chuckles a little. “I asked if maybe I had laser hands or something to Amenadiel.”

“If you could have any power, which would you have wanted for being a miracle. Come on, not like God’s going to give it out now,” Ella pries.

“Really?”

Ella nods. “Totally. I won’t tell anyone, even Mike, what you say. Just between us girls.”

Chloe leans back and considers the question, her eyes gazing around the room and settling on Dan and then Lucifer (they’re arguing about something and Lucifer is gesticulating broadly at his crystal bracelet as they do) before going back to meet Ella’s. “I think telepathy. I have been played so many times. I…maybe not even telepathy, maybe just being a human lie detector. I don’t want to be deceived again, not like with the Palmetto case or with Pierce and his bullshit.”

“Not even with the Celestial in your life?”

Chloe frowns. “You speak like you know. How close are you and ‘Mike’ really? I mean it; he’s a bad guy, Ella. You shouldn’t hang around him.”

Ella swallows at that but holds her head high. She won’t let anyone scare her off. He makes her feel better. Just hanging out with him for movie nights or museum tours made her happy. It’s been an, okay, very grouchy island of respite in an otherwise crappy, crappy year.

“I like him, okay? But we just go to museums and do movie nights. It’s friendly, you know? It’s not more than that.”

It’s a lie, but it’s fair to serve that back to her friends, especially since she isn’t sure Lucifer and Amenadiel are ready to hear more and, frankly, not even three weeks into a romantic relationship, Ella has no idea if this is going to last. No need to get a three alarm blaze going between the angels if she and Michael will just end for normal, mortal reasons anyway.

“I just…bc careful.”

“For once, I think I am,” Ella replies. That much is true. They’re taking it slowly, and it’s oddly novel to do it that way. She likes it---the eager make-outs, the movie nights, and the cuddles---it’s so different from falling into bed with so many in the loser parade, and she loves it. “But you know, I get it. I do. It sucks when you realize people lied to you.”

Chloe pats her shoulder again. “Ella, it wasn’t…Dan only knows because Michael told him on purpose. Hell, it’s the only reason I know I’m a miracle.”

“Do you think Lucifer would have ever admitted it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Ah, then that’s what that feels like.”

Chloe frowns at her, the severity of the gesture aging her a bit. “What?”

“Just you know what it’s like to be in the dark a lot, so I get it. But I’m not some kid who needs protection, and I work with him too. I fucking teach Charlie math and science. I go to an angel’s house a few times a week!”

“It’s Linda’s house, technically.”

Ella rolls her eyes. “You know what I mean. Still, yeah a power so you never get lied to again would be a good one. I can relate.” Maybe if she’d had that, Pete couldn’t have…

Except something in her gut _had been telling her_ it was too much, too fast. That it was too perfect and planned out. That a woman like her just didn’t deserve that kind of happiness, not after a life of gambling and boosting cars, not with her so-called insanity. If she’d listened to her damn instincts…

“Ella?” Chloe shakes her shoulder. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I…hey do you want to hear what I would pick?”

Chloe smiles and the looks is both genuine and relieved. Damn it, Ella must have zoned out more than she assumed. It happens sometimes, even now. It’s not as bad as it was right after Pete, but sometimes something will remind her too much of him and she’ll be back in that fucking hot house with all those lilies.

She shakes her head. That’s evergreen candle in her nose and _not_ the sickly sweet scent of lily. Ella takes comfort from her reality and offers Chloe an answer:

“Invulnerability. I wouldn’t want anyone to be able to mess with me again. I mean, I’m not the miracle---”

“Overrated.”

“Just a happy accident, maybe. Or maybe not,” Ella continues. “But if I could be anything, I’d be like Teflon or diamond---anything that couldn’t be hurt. It must be nice to go through the world and know so few things can really get to you. I mean, sure, the guys do a number on _each other_ , but they’re pretty safe otherwise. It must be nice.”

Chloe sighs and stares longingly at Lucifer. “I think it’s harder in some ways. He gets really anxious sometimes. Trixie had to get her appendix out last May and he freaked a lot. He’s not used to mortality, and it shows. I…maybe it’s harder to realize you leave everything behind eventually. I really don’t know.”

Ella shakes her head and stands up. She has a plan, a brilliant prank plan before she heads to trivia with her boyfriend as promised. But she definitely knows what’s the better deal. “Nah, being invulnerable---untouchable---I bet there’s nothing like it.”

**

Lucifer has finished his argument with Daniel. It’s nothing dire. Their relationship is the best it’s been ever, which should be odd considering he’s basically a step-Satan to the urchin and is having so much glorious sex with the douche’s ex. However, now that Daniel knows and has, to be fair, gotten the whole trying-to-kill-the-Devil thing behind them, they get along famously. Except tonight. There has been a bit of rank pulling, and Daniel has insisted like the stubborn moron he is that Lucifer is to return the new cellphone he got for the offspring.

Just because Daniel is cheap doesn’t mean Lucifer should be.

Then again, he knows that neither Daniel nor the detective wanted Trixie to have the newest iPhone. They had set up a system for her to earn and upgrade on her pitiable off-brand phone with enough chores, but it was no bother for him to get what the spawn wanted. So why couldn’t he?

Apparently, Daniel didn’t approve, and now Lucifer is seriously questioning his taste. Or, to be honest, dreading the possibility that his detective might also hate his inspired present idea. Suddenly parched---and sod the eggnog---Lucifer hunts down his jacket, slung over the detective’s chair, and hunts for his flask.

It’s _not_ there.

He groans and asks several unis and a rookie if they’ve seen his flask before García from narcotics is helpful enough to say she glimpsed it in Miss Lopez’s lab. Odd, Lucifer doesn’t remember leaving it there, but it’s been a long night, and he might have taken a bit of (or a Celestial ton of) Molly to help himself get through this dreadful night of holiday cheer.

He has no ill will to his half-brother, but it’s hard to swallow one of _two_ days to praise Jesus when the world spends 365 despising him and blaming the Devil for all their own evil deeds. So, again, it all circles back to Dad being a prick and that is assuredly the oldest story in all of history. However, his flask would be enjoyable and he figures being a bit loopy explains why he’s misplaced it.

Though he hasn’t quite figured out what to procure for Miss Lopez for her present, so he isn’t sure why he’d have gone into her lab in the first place.

Small details, nitpicks regardless, and soon Lucifer slips into the lab and picks up his cherished flask. He takes a sip of it quickly, just desperate for a bit of a burn down his throat to chase away the after taste of Daniel’s gloomy mood.

That is his mistake.

He coughs loudly and spits into the nearest trashcan, moderately horrified to find something black and thick coming from his mouth. He spits again (how unbecoming), and the lights in the lab come up to full blast. Miss Lopez has walked in and is grinning ear to ear, the first real expression of cheer on her face he’s seen in his presence since Thanksgiving.

She hands him a huge cup of water and a fistful of paper towels.

“Sorry, dude, but you have to admit _lying_ to me for almost five years meant you had it coming.”

Lucifer narrows his eyes at her but chugs down half the glass of water greedily and swipes at his chin and his lips. Glancing down at the towel confirms for him that it comes back covered in inky blackness.

“Did you fill this with the printer toner?”

“Not gonna kill you, right?”

He glares at her and lets his eyes go crimson because there’s no reason really not to---if she can spend time around the Angel of Fear and seem functional, she can take a bit of red eyes---and tries to scare her just a little. If only for spite. She doesn’t even flinch, and Lucifer regrets just a bit he may have missed his window for her to be awed or even cowed by his powers. It’s for the best, but she fed the Devil toner and there should be some comeuppance.

There won’t be of course. He could never really prank Rae Rae either, hasn’t the heart to leave a snake in her desk as if she were Daniel or some rookie who might have managed to piss him off.

So, finally, after he’s done wiping his face and making sure in the reflection of his silver cigarette case that he’s clean, Lucifer lets his eyes stop simmering and regards her.

“Well, Miss Lopez, that was quite the maneuver you made. I did not see it coming. Perhaps I should have. You’ve been pissed with me enough to do such a thing.”

She shrugs and shoves her hands in her jeans pockets. The forensic scientist certainly looks innocent enough in her t-shirt with a fluffy cartoon llama on it, covered in tree lights, and with the inauspicious caption of “Fa la la la llama.” It is hardly the look of a mastermind who has gotten one over on the Devil, but Lucifer is sure she’s one of a few to do so.

Or maybe a bit more.

But she’s top of the list for her cleverness, or maybe he didn’t expect the _Et tu, Brute_ from her too.

“You earned it, _pendejo_. You lied for a long time.”

He shakes his head and sets the towel on her table besides his flask. It’s probably ruined, which is a shame. It was a parting gift long ago and in another life from dear old Oscar, but maybe he can find someone to rid it of that rancid ink taste somehow.

“I have always said I was the Devil. You refused to believe me.”

“You knew I assumed you were auditioning but apparently failing like _hard_ to get the part in _Diablo_.” She leans against the table and right up next to him, shoulder to shoulder but there is no Christmas hug for him. No Lopez hug in weeks, and that’s how Lucifer knows he’s truly in the doghouse.

“Yes well, I still never lie.”

“You bluff, dude, or you compartmentalize. However, you see it, you had me bending over into a pretzel to try and make everything fit, and it just didn’t.”

He looks down at her and hates himself for the watery sheen to her eyes. “Miss Lopez, you need to understand that I didn’t tell you because of me and nothing to do with trust in you, not really.”

She arches an eyebrow with him and her words are faster than even her usual rapid-fire speak. “But you didn’t tell me so you had to think I’d either freak out or that I’d hate you or both or that I’m not your friend and I am! Or I thought I was!”

He tries not to flinch at any use of the past tense with regards to their friendship. It’s hard, but he manages. Just barely. “And that’s because Linda thought she could take it too, and for two weeks she was catatonic and had fired me as a patient. It drove the detective to Rome and an exorcist.”

Ella blinks up at him and coughs out something terse in Spanish about how that can’t be at all.

He answers her back that it most surely was in Spanish before switching back to English. “Miss Lopez, those were the better times. Michael, that pillock, told Daniel and he attempted to _shoot me_. It didn’t work, but you know at one time it very well could have after what happened with the siege at _Lux_. I appreciated what we had, that it was like having a sister again since I’m clearly not allowed home and you know exactly in great, Biblical detail how much my family loathes me.”

“Even Rae Rae?”

“We don’t talk often. She’s rather busy with the grim reaping, essentially, and I think…I think she feels bad she didn’t side with me when she could have. I’m glad she didn’t, considering it all went pear-shaped and exploded in my face.”

“I don’t think I’d have shot you,” Ella says winking up at him, a bit of her usual smile teasing at her lips.

“If a human drank toner, they might die. You poisoned me and ruined an antique flask so it might be worse than Daniel destroying some Burberry.”

She shakes her head and finally, after so many weeks, there’s a Lopez latched around his middle. For once, Lucifer doesn’t stiffen up but instead wraps his arms around her, embraces her wholly and relaxes into the embrace. A hug he feared might never come again.

“It’s a good prank. Dude, I have four brothers. I could do so much worse. I mean, I know where you park the ‘Vette.”

“How dare you!”

“I could steal from the Devil, help myself to your baby for a few hours.”

“You wouldn’t!”

“I might. I don’t like being lied to, Luce. I don’t at all, especially after Pete, but I just…I didn’t think about how badly people take it either. I mean, once Michael filled me in, I knew everyone else knew and you still go to therapy and now Decker hardly can keep her hands off of you. Rayos, even you and Dan are doing pretty good for you guys.”

“Maybe, he is giving guidelines for what I can and can’t buy the urchin for Christmas.”

“Maybe not all of a Best Buy then,” Ella replies, laughing.

“I am generous as a friend, Miss Lopez, let that always be said of me. After all, what do you want for Christmas. I’ve lacked the time to inquire with you.”

She lets him go and nudges his side with her shoulder (she has no hope of coming even _close_ to his own shoulder, tiny as she is). “Just be honest with me, okay? I get that a lot of shit went down between you and your brothers. I get that now I know the angel thing, then Michael owes me a how did you get grounded explanation too.”

“Yes, he very much does.”

“But trust that I’m not gonna just run or, ugh, call a priest. Poor Chloe, what a mess.”

Lucifer sighs and tries not to think of Kinley even if the sting of betrayal will never fade from him, not completely. “It’s been settled. But you can understand how I didn’t want to go through that again, Miss Lopez.”

“I’m like good friends with your twin brother, we’ve known each other five years, and I know that you’re _that_ Satan. You totally can just call me ‘Ella.’”

Lucifer chuckles at that. “I prefer my titles, but _hermanita_ , I can try to find something less formal, but you shall always be ‘Miss Lopez’ to me. You deserve a bit of additional recognition.” He nudges her with his shoulder. “You mean so very much to me, and you’re a great friend. I didn’t want to lose that.”

“I’m sorry people freak out. It’s a big thing.” She eyes him with brown eyes so wide that even with all his experience, Lucifer can hardly believe they’re quite real. “I always said you got a bad rap. I mean, so what? So some lady at an apple. That’s not the end of the world.”

“I suspect if you’ve been passing time with Michael, then you’ve heard by now about the Rebellion. Every side has their take and I just needed Father to let me have Free Will. To have choice is something humans take for granted, but it’s the only thing I’ve ever craved. You lot have no idea how lucky you truly are.”

A soft hand is on his arm, and Lucifer stills, scared even now that if he so much as breathes that Ella’s acceptance will vanish like morning dew in the sun. “Michael hasn’t talked about that. It’s only been a few weeks, and I get things in small dollops. I think he thinks he’ll break my brain if it’s the full enchilada at once. I can’t say he’s wrong.”

“I think that’s the same way from me. I was selfish to _bluff_ about myself, but I didn’t want to lose this…what we have.” He shakes his head ruefully. “Also, I don’t relish being shot. I really loved that suit Daniel so thoughtlessly ruined.”

“Maybe you need a work wardrobe. I mean, you can have suits you can bear to ruin.”

“And where something off the rack? I’d rather be back in Hell!”

Her smile falls. “You were back there, when you were supposed to be in Florida helping family…you were in Hell again.”

His shoulders sag a little, but he works to keep his tone glib for her. Hell is hard for all humans, and he doesn’t wish to scare her, especially now that after hard fought battles, Father has let him have a reprieve, at least for the duration of the detective’s life and Ella’s by extension. It’s his cross to bear, and he’ll shoulder it in silence. “I was, but it was relatively quick business. There were whole centuries I wasn’t able to take a holiday on Earth so two months is a snap compared to those.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“I have ruled Hell---overrated kingdom by the way---for eons. One gets used to it.” Which was true, but he’d never had to go back while in love with another. Every second without the detective was agony. Thus, thousands of years was unbearable. He didn’t know how he’d deal with her loss, but he had ideas for the ring with Lilith’s immortality in it, if only the detective were amenable to it… “But there’s more to what I am, and one day, you may no longer feel like being my friend.”

“I thought we were like brother and sister,” she jokes.

“I do too, although that makes it even more unseemly that you’re taking up with that ne’er-do-well, Michael.”

She rolls her eyes and crosses her arms back over her chest. Lucifer instantly misses the warmth of her palm on his arms. “I’m not going to stop being friends with both of you. If you really wanted to get me a good Christmas present---”

“I might talk Santa into getting you only coal from now on, Miss Lopez.”

Brown eyes glitter back at him and Lucifer smirks at the way she bounces. Ella is hardly a child or even a young adult, but she gets so eager over so many things, and that innocence is inspiring. It’s also something he feared would be snuffed out after Pete Daly. More than enough justification to show the wanker his entire other form, to relish the screams of the man who dared to touch one of _his_ friends. His _family._

But she was better lately, and Lucifer has no idea how to explain that. It couldn’t be his weasel-like coward of a twin; it’s not possible that Michael makes anyone happy.

Could it?

“Is there a Santa?” she asks, still squirmy and bouncy.

Lucifer’s smirk broadens. “It’s for me to know which supernatural creatures are real and which are not. As for Saint Nick, well, I can say I have methods to dump a ton of coal on you, especially for the toner stunt. How devious, _hermanita_.”

“Ooh, what about vampires? I admit it. I totally had a _Twilight_ phase when I was younger.”

Lucifer groans. “No, nothing undead lingers---not true ghosts, no vampires, and no zombies. There’s a system in place for handling that.”

“Right,” she says, her tone a bit less chipper. “Rae Rae is part of that, right?”

“Yes, and I haven’t been able to get her to come to me either. I assume you’ve been trying since Michael let that pesky feline out of the bag.”

“Yeah, she’s kind of AWOL.”

“Little Sis is a busy psychopomp but saying she has souls to ferry also gives her enough of an excuse to avoid conflict. I’ll get her on the line somehow; I swear to you.”

“Yeah, we have to catch up like there’s no tomorrow, dude, but I just…can you try with Michael? I know I don’t understand what he did when he first showed up but---”

“You do not,” Lucifer replies, fighting to get the words out through intermittently clenched teeth. He struggles to keep his eyes normal for now because his idiot twin gets under his skin more efficiently than any other, always has. “I shall make a deal with you.”

“A deal with the Devil, should be interesting,” she says, her words light and kind despite their meaning, despite the fact she now _knows_ what he is. “So, what do you have for me, _El Diablo_?”

“I will work to reconcile with my twin…at least be decent to him around you for your own sake, _hermanita_ , if you get the full story of his crimes from him. If you still want Michael to be around you then, well, I would rather have you in my life in any way I can than drive you off with ancient feuds.”

“Sounds so over the top, buddy.”

He sighs. “If only it were. Michael is devious and cruel, and I worry he shall shatter your heart.”

She glares up at him, and there’s a ferocity in her eyes that wasn’t there before Pete. That’s eat at him too. She shouldn’t have to be that strong or that ready to fight. He should have _known_ what Pete was, should have paid bloody attention. But it’s too late for that now. After all, even Amenadiel can’t rewind time.

It’s certainly beyond the Devil himself to do it.

“I can handle it. I’ve had the worst thrown at me in Detroit and everywhere else, and after---”

He hugs her with one arm slung around her shoulder then. “Pete shall face all the wrath Hell has for him, believe me.”

“I don’t want that,” she admits, perhaps surprising them both. “I just meant that I’m not fragile and I don’t have to be treated like fine glass. Mike’s been good to me, and if after I hear all the things about him, well, I don’t feel safe, I won’t stay.”

“I hope that you don’t.”

“I hope that I can. He’s really…in some ways, he does remind me of you.”

He laughs and arches one eyebrow up at her. “Miss Lopez, I’d no idea you fancied me.”

“Eww, gross. You’re like Jay to me.” She answers, and he lets some of it pass. He doesn’t wan t to ruin her relationship with her eldest brother, even if Jay Lopez hardly merits the hero worship. “But you have to know that Michael has this whole other side to him, and it’s…it’s been nice. _Llena de tenura_.”

“I hope that you’re correct, Miss Lopez, and he’s trying something different. I know Michael well, and the long game has always been his specialty.”

She pulls away from him and busies herself gathering up her purse---and it has large, green fake ears, and Lucifer has fuck all idea which show or movie is from as he can’t keep track of her varied and very nerdy interests---and then her jacket. “I don’t think it is this time, and if I’m _right,_ then you have to be nice to him!”

“You’ve my word. If you still want to associate with him after learning about all he’s done in Los Angeles, then I shall be civil with Michael whilst around you. Shall that suffice.”

“It’s not exactly what I wanted, but I’ll take it.”

He bows a little, offering her some courtly manners. “Then, as always, _hermanita_ , it’s my pleasure to draw up a new deal.”

“Because you’re the Devil.”

“Yup, and now you’re finally getting it.”  
**

“And the grand final answer is ‘luminol.’ That’s what forensic techs use to search for blood in crime scenes!” The trivia host announces, and Michael chuckles while heading up with Ella to collect his winnings.

Usually, trivia poses more of a challenge but the murder documentaries from streaming category as well as the _actual_ Christmas story questions have worked in both their favors. It’s a shame they won’t win more for winning by an ass-kicking fifty points over every other team, but he’s still raking in five hundred for the night and the spring is evident in Ella’s every step as the host hands them five Benjamins. She squeals, and, okay, Michael flinches a little because Celestial hearing _is_ sensitive after all. But it’s worth it. Every time he sees her smile broadly, it’s worth it. And when it’s because of something he had a hand in, well, it feels as close to the Silver City as he’s likely to get.

Maybe as he’ll ever get again.

“Sweet, so I am buying another margarita.”

He takes the five bills from her and shoves them in his pocket. “Nah, enjoy the haul, Lopez. I’ll treat you to the next dose of Tequila for your liver.”

“I thank you,” she says. “my liver probably doesn’t!”

They make their way to the bar and he orders her a strawberry margarita that comes not with a small umbrella or anything vaguely tropical in it but a wrapped candy cane (the type that’s fruit-flavored and not traditional peppermint at least) looped over the glass rim. Michael asks for a water. Drinks here are like ten bucks minimum, even a plain shot, and anything mixed is an arm and a Dad-damned leg. He will take water thank you, since he can’t get drunk on human amounts and doesn’t have the bank account to clear out a Celestial quantity here.

Ella happily sips at her monster drink for a while before finally eyeing him. Michael shifts nervously in his seat. Even though she’s helped kick major ass tonight since she slid in a round late from the station Christmas party, Lopez has been subdued. That worries him. Truly it does. A quiet Ella might be one who’s thinking to much about Pete.

He knows about fear, knows even the most innocuous looking thing can set off memories. Currently, he can’t feel anything Pete related from her. When she’s most worked up, the hot house lamps are practically burning on his skin, and his scent of lilies turn his stomach. So, no, it can’t be Pete. However, as he lowers his walls, he notices that she’s anxious, that there’s a chill still easing up her spine.

Michael hopes it’s not about him.

“Are you okay?” he prods. “You don’t seem like you. Was the Christmas party that boring?”

“No, but I had a long talk with Lucifer.”

“Oh, that would do it. My twin can be a real fun suck.”

She snorts into her drink which bubbles ominously before she speaks. “Yeah, Lucifer Morningstar, least fun person in Los Angeles so like no one ever. It’s not that.”

“It’s something. Are you two still fighting about the truth bomb? I don’t…you like him, and I want you to still have your friends, even if Amenadiel and Samael drive me nuts,” which is an understatement for the violence between the three of them. “…well, they’re your friends and what I feel doesn’t have to cloud that.”

She shakes her head and haphazardly blows a spare bit of bangs from her eyes. “No, just _compartmentalize_ which angels I’ll hang out with and when. You three are all about landmines and stuff you won’t say.”

Ah, so that was it. Sam had shot his mouth off. Fuck, did Lopez know about even the kidnapping Chloe Decker part? Assuredly, not his finest moment.

“What did Sam ramble on about? He always was great at pompous speeches,” Michael gestures toward the bartender and orders a Vodka and soda anyway.

Apparently, twelve dollars for a drink will be something he’s willing to shell out for today. Even a fraction of warmth in his belly to take the edge off whatever _this_ is about to be. The bartender is efficient, a relief, and soon Michael has a shot glass to play with to keep his mind focused and his growing anxieties from overwhelming him.

Ella eyes him, and his breath hitches at how beautiful she is, even toward the end of the night and clearly tired from two long events. Even in a dumbass llama t-shirt, Ella Lopez is one of the most gorgeous humans he’s ever come across, and Michael’s pretty sure she has no clue exactly how precious and rare she is.

“Lucifer and I hashed it out. I’m still upset he lied, but I get it. Apparently everyone he shows goes postal, and I guess he wasn’t ready for a fourth friend to start grabbing for holy water.” She laughs, and it’s the best sound he’s heard in eons. “Oh, and I filled his flask with printer toner. That prank? So worth it!”

He laughs and drains his shot in one sip then orders another. Ella may have made up with his fucking brother, but Michael can _feel_ it. Samael has said something, and Michael’s already terrified that she’s turned against him as everyone always does. It’s not without cause, and he’s pulled some crappy stunts or he’d be allowed back in the Silver City by now, even he can admit that. But he doesn’t want to lose _her_. Dear Dad, please don’t let him run her off too.

“Tell me you have pictures.”

“I got a few with my cell, and I might even show them to you.”

“I’m splitting our haul, 50-50. For two hundred and fifty big ones, I want you to print a pic out, frame it, and I’ll put it on my mostly pointless in Southern California mantel piece.”

Lopez nods. “You have a deal. Totally ruined a suit for him, the _idiota_. I just…I’m over being angry about everything, but he still needed to realize that since _everyone else_ knew, it was time for me too.”

Michael shrugs and, for once, is defending Sam. Maybe his twin’s former domain is freezing over because it’s the _last_ thing Michael is likely or would want to do. “Yeah, but to be fair, Espinoza only knows cause I took great joy in showing him. It’s not like he went all red-faced and burned for the precinct as a floor show.”

Ella chokes into her straw and coughs beside him. He rubs her back in small, calming circles until she gets her grip. “Wait, what?”

“He explained when you talked that he can look different, right?”

“Sure, but I figured it was mostly that red eye thing he did…possibly horns.”

“Yeah, none of those.”

“But he’s red and burned? I mean, totally _quemado_?”

“Lake of Fire, Lopez. That part is apparently accurate. Seen the face myself, far from pleasant. You can see why Sam doesn’t like spreading the proof. I mean, he could do the wings too, but deep down, there’s a gross underbelly to being the Devil, and it’s why Chloe Decker ran for Italy.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

She shakes her head and plays with the candy cane between her fingers but doesn’t unwrap it. “I didn’t really guess there was that part to it. He was so mad about the implications of horns that I figured a lot of the stuff was bullshit.”

“Not the burns, no. It’s complicated. If that’s all what Dad wants or if it’s psychosomatic is kind of a hard call. Maybe it’s both; I dunno.” Michael shrugs. “Either way, self-actualization is a real bitch, and what’s left of either of us isn’t great to see.”

A soft hand is over his and Michael sighs. Ella’s eyes are so wide and brimming with that sincerity that snuck through his defenses. Maybe that’s her superpower. He wouldn’t be surprised. “I’m sorry your dad pitted you against each other. That sucks. It really does. I’m the only girl, but sometimes I see how César and Alejandro get really competitive to please mom. Not that you can please mamí, but you know what I mean.”

“If I hold my tongue sometimes on how I really feel about Dad or Samael cause it would hurt you, then you _really_ don’t want me to get started on Raquel. I have so many thoughts about the shit she says about you, Lopez.”

She sniffles beside him but doesn’t drop her hand. “Mamí’s not wrong. I mean, as far as she knows, I _am_ loca. Not like she knows I’m apparently some kind of angel magnet.”

“Meh, I’m not a very good angel and Sam’s not one at all and Chucky doesn’t have powers so maybe more like a wonky angel magnet.”

She slaps him lightly on the arm. “Are you really serious?”

“Look, I have no idea why you were the first human Rae Rae followed around like a puppy. I really don’t, but it’s not about you being wonky or weird or a miracle, as far as I know. You just got lucky.”

Ella laughs at that and does unwrap her fruit-flavored candy cane and shoves it in her mouth. She sucks on it absent-mindedly for a while and Michael’s both far too warm in his turtleneck and, damn it, if his shoulders aren’t twinging. Finally, she must have gotten her fill of the candy as she takes it out and gestures wildly with it as she speaks. “Maybe, but it’s still weird. The Angel of Death has been my bestie since I was eight. The Devil works with me, and I tutor a Nephilim. Kind of.”

“I knew Chucky mostly just drools over whatever ‘science’ stuff you pretend to show him.”

“I try, but he really loves the small test tube kit I have. It’s just mixing food coloring and water and practicing measuring with plastic tubes, but he totally goes crazy when I make purple. Kid loves it!”

“Good to know,” Michael is _finally_ given his drink and the traffic in the bar is picking up as the night drags on. The Vodka is a relief on his tongue. He still can sense that dark cloud over Ella, and he knows his twin said something. Tit for tat. “Oh, and don’t leave off your boyfriend is the Angel of Fear. That’s top line on my resume.”

She sets the candy cane down on a napkin and grabs a quick sip of her rapidly melting drink. “Sword of God?”

“Long, long time since that, chica,” he adds, and he can’t keep the bitterness from creeping over him. Well, more than its usual. “Sam saw to that.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Hey, it was a battle and that’s what happens. People get hurt so when idiots lead Rebellions, angels die or Fall. It was…Samael was never a planner.”

“Yeah, that so hasn’t changed,” she adds, her hand on his good shoulder. “It’s weird that I still get so much strength from your dad but it really hurts that he let you two go at it, that he basically made you hurt each other. It’s just messed up.”

“Can’t be helped now. I tried to get even, and that just blew up in my face.”

“We have to talk about that someday and soon, you know?” she says, her voice so small and unsure. He hates that, but he did spend a while trying to hurt Samael---really hurt him---and that made everyone from Chucky to even Lopez in a way collateral damage.

If Sam has hidden his nature from her, then Michael can admit he’s guilty of whitewashing all he’s done.

It wasn’t going to last. He knows by now with as much as he lies, even as fun as it can be, that the truth always finds a way to come out.

“Do we have to do it before Christmas? I thought you were on a quest to teach me the true meaning of everything?” He dares to glance down at her and hates the serious expression on her face.

“Well, it’s only a few days away. I would rather enjoy our next holiday together and have it so _not_ involve my family at all.”

“Or mine.”

“Duly noted. Not a peep about Linda’s dinner, promise.”

“Good,” he says, finishing the last of his drink and deciding against a third. It’s too fucking expensive even if he likes the warmth of it. And they’re almost ready to leave. “But?”

“We have to talk about what you did when you came to Los Angeles because I have fuck all clue, dude, and that’s…I can get from Chloe and Lucifer both it was a big fucking deal.”

He sighs and scratches at his face, wincing a little as his fingers graze over the scar he’s still not quite used to finding there. Seriously, fuck you too, Sam. “What if you don’t like the answers?”

“Well, you won’t lie with me, will you?”

“I want to. I usually do,” he admits, slipping off his stool and straightening out his blazer.

He leaves a couple of bills on the table to close out their tab. Lopez takes the hint and drinks the rest of her margarita---she was down to the dregs anyway---and slips less than gracefully off her seat. She’s so tiny that it makes him smirk a little to see her struggle with the stool’s height. Lopez is a bit like a yappy dog, maybe a yorkie or a Jack Russell terrier. She has all this energy and all this gravity to her, but at the same time, she’s still freaking tiny.

The world could knock her back so hard.

Mostly thanks to Pete and her family, it _already has_.

And here she is, still ready to fight anything into submission, well, in her own sunshiney way. He admires her for it. That resilience.

“But will you lie to me?” she asks, even as he helps her into her hoodie.

Michael shakes his head. “No, partly because my family’s done far too fucking much of that to you, especially Azrael. But also, yeah, Sam or Chloe Decker will just tell you everything from their perspective if I don’t.”

“Not winning me over there, Mike.”

He sighs as they make their way toward the main door and soon to the parking lot. “I’m not looking forward to it, chica. I…it wasn’t murder or something, but they weren’t exactly good things either. You probably won’t…it was nice having a friend… _having someone more_ while it lasted.”

They stop under the awning between the bar’s dining room and the waiting area where the hostess is frantically writing down names for the nine o’clock rush. Ella turns to face him and brings her hand up to stroke his left cheek, and he appreciates it. Appreciates that she has no hesitance to touch his weak side or his scar, but that she only does if he’s up for it. It’s nice to know his ugliness and his flaws don’t bother her, but that she doesn’t overfocus on them either.

“Don’t write me out yet, okay? It’s just…there’s a lot to think about. We went from museum buddies to this to angelic secrets all so fast. I’m going to hear you out. Trust me, I have four older brothers and I spent a lot of time pranking Ricardo. Like a lot.”

“How bad could anything you have done been?”

“He legally cannot enter the state of Nevada.”

“Holy shit. You are a dangerous woman,” he says, feeling his eyes go wide.

“Definitely.” She laughs and tilts her head up as she does it. Then, Lopez regards him again and turns that megawatt smile on at full blast. “Cool, look at that.”

He arches his neck to find a few twigs and berries lashed together with a bow above them. It’s just more evergreen crap, isn’t it? He has no idea why Ella looks like she won the lottery just to be under it. “Yeah, no clue why this is a big deal.”

“Mistletoe?”

“I don’t get around that much. I mean, last time I was around for more than a day or two was the ‘20s…uh, the _other_ ‘20s…and I wasn’t taking notes on how the little half-brother was being cheered on.”

She shudders a little. “I cannot believe Gabriel did that.”

“You should. He might be even hornier than Sam. Now that Samael is a one detective-Devil, Gabe’s _definitely_ more of a horn dog. Guaranteed.”

She rolls her eyes and gestures to the twigs above. “Well, if you’ve been too busy and up in the Silver City to get up to date on human tradition, let me explain. This is for…well, if you’re under it, you kiss who you’re with.”

“Always?”

“Well, not like tongue action with a relative or something. It’s in reason, but,” she adds, her smile growing coquettish and his shoulders are so pinched and tight and if they don’t get back to his house soon there is going to be forty feet of angel wings crammed in this bar. “it’s a tradition you should learn.”

“Meaning?”

Ella steps up on tiptoe and he takes pity on her and bends toward her as well. After all, she’ll never compensate for the foot between them unless she bends too. “Merry Christmas, Michael.”

And her lips are so soft and inviting on his own, and Michael can’t help but love it and her.

Now, if only the truth of all he’s done won’t drive her away. He’s far from sanguine about that, but, for now, he has her arms wrapped around him and her tongue teasing his own under the mistletoe, and it’s the best Christmas tradition he’s experienced so far.

By a damn mile.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there's a bit of a setback because of stupid Pete nightmares.

**Chapter Four**

Despite everything, the tension between them because Michael had promised after Christmas Day to explain everything to Ella, the actual lead up to the holiday is going pretty well. He still has fuck all idea what to get her. He figures something nerdy since it is still just their first year together, but he is overwhelmed with the prospect of it. Michael doesn’t want to mess it up. He also has no one to ask, since all of Ella’s friends are by extension Sam’s friends and, okay, they all have a perfectly valid reason to hate him. But he’ll figure it out. He’s bound for the mall (ugh) tomorrow, and he’ll find the right thing for her.

He better.

Michael knows he’s been delaying the inevitable, and it’s the twenty-third already. But he’d been scouring Google and doing research and nervous about wasting money on something Lopez would hate.

On the plus side, he’s decided that he enjoys being with her very much. Although they had only gone so far, and he has no idea how to explain to Lopez that he has fuck all experience with, well, _anything_. Still, Michael feels like the make out under the mistletoe has led to more intimacy between them.

Like now.

Like when she’s pulling at the hem of his turtleneck, and he obliges by shucking it off.

And who knew that having the lights on the tree actually made the whole thing more enticing? Michael wouldn’t have predicted that.

Lopez grins at him, and he can’t help but shrink under her gaze. It is… _difficult._ Michael is sure she and Sam have…well he’s not one hundred percent _sure_ , but Samael is basically a horndog and his twin has had more than ample time to seduce Ella. It seems inevitable that at some point his brother had done just that, since Sam wasn’t exactly known for discretion. It would also explain Samael’s possessive protection of her. But when Lopez looks at him, especially when he’s shirtless shirtless, Michael can’t help but worry over her comparing him with Samael.

That his sloped shoulder and the rigid posture of his weakened right side might turn her off. It had always been lacking before. Why would it be enough now? Michael sighs and stills under her evaluations, waiting for her to change her mind even _before_ he tells her everything about what he’s done.

But her eyes if anything are even _hungrier_ than they’d been before.

“You’re amazing,” she says, and for once, Michael can _almost_ believe such a sentiment.

Michael looks away, his gaze landing on the tree and all its assembled heroes. “I promise you that I’m not, Lopez.”

She reaches up and cups his right cheek, her thumb tracing the edges of his scar. Of the scar _Samael_ had given him. “Dude, you don’t have to be self-conscious. I’m being completely serious. You really have no idea how hot you are, do you?”

Michael dares to look at her and gives a derisive snort. “I can’t believe I’m the one doing this because of all the times _not_ to bring my idiot twin into something…but I’m not him and I know that…” he shrugs and groans when only his good shoulder moves. Toward the end of the day, his fucking right side gets so very stiff. “He’s better. It’s very true, and you were pretty damn shellshocked before, Lopez, but my wings are an eyesore. I know seeing angel wings at all must have been beyond crazy for a mortal, but I have it on very good authority that my wings are a monstrosity for all the Host. I hadn’t really thought about the rest of me.”

A lie, but he still clings to those from time to time, even with her.

And he knows very well that his busted right side, year-old scar, and Dad help him, abomination of wings are all wrong, all affronts because angels are never broken.

Except for him.

She stands up then and hands him his turtleneck.

Michael takes it and feels a chill up his spine. Yes, of course she’s gotten too much of an eyeful already. “See, I thought so.”

Lopez shakes her head and gathers a blanket from behind them on the sofa and then curls under it with him even as he finishes shoving his shirt back on. “You know, we can take things however you want. We have the biggest talk ever after Christmas because I get you did a lot of things to make Chloe and Lucifer mad at you, but I’m willing to hear your side of things.”

He swallows heavily at that. “I know.”

“But you just…if it’s too much, too fast, I get that too. I know you have, uh, the wing thing.”

Michael blushes. “That’s not too bad.” Although his shoulder blades were twitching _a lot_ this evening. “It’s more that I understand if you feel like you’re settling or if when you get a better look at me, I’m not what you really want.” He’s proud of himself for not saying _who_ because of course Samael is a sore point between them on so many levels.

She snuggles closer into him and sets her head on his shoulder. “Michael, I care about you a lot, and it’s not because of how you look, and you’re not ugly. Like, at all. I am so sorry your brothers and sisters made you feel that way. I really am. I know how bad even just brothers making fun of you can feel.”

Michael dares to look her in the eyes, and they’re so wide and open, that he can’t help but believe her, that somehow Ella sees something special---at least for now---when his family has always just seen trash.

“And I’m sorry Ricardo makes fun of you over Rae Rae,” he replies.

“Well, all of them mostly except Jay. He always made sure to call the rest off, but Ricardo does it the most. We just don’t get along. But you’re not ugly, and you never were.”

He nods and tries to smile for her, although he doesn’t feel it. “I’m at least more passable among humans, but if you knew anything about wings---”

“I do! I have a chicken and everything.”

“Not the same, Lopez, and if anything were blasphemous, equating Celestial and chicken wingss would be it.”

She rolls her eyes at the statement. “But you’re not bad, and if your brothers and sisters made you think that…they were wrong, Mike, and I don’t understand how angels can be so mean. When I was growing up in church, I always thought they were protectors.”

“We are, but we’re not without a lot of faults,” he admits. “Even the good ones who aren’t Fallen. We can be petty with each other, but I wish I could make you understand.” He shakes his head and kisses the crown of hers. This wouldn’t last beyond the twenty-sixth anyway. It was impossible she’d hear about him kidnapping Chloe Decker and be cool with it. Borrowed time, and he is ruining what little he has left by hating himself.

Then again, it’s one of the few constants about him.

“Understand what?”

“You’re wasting your time with me. Samael is Fallen, but you definitely have the most defective of the actual angels on your sofa, Lopez. You might need to ask Dad for a refund.”

She glares up at him. “Stop talking about yourself like that. It’s wrong.”

“It’s what they all say. Dear Dad, you should hear Remiel and Gabriel. Uriel loved to torment me too in his way before he died.”

“But they’re not here, and if they were that shitty, no wonder you’re on earth.”

“I’m mostly on earth because Dad won’t let me go home.”

“And is it home? Is Heaven any better for you than Detroit is for me?”

Michael sighs again. “I…I can’t say. It’s where I’m supposed to be, and for the longest time, I thought I hated it lately because they all praise Sam and how selfless he is with Chloe Decker.”

Although he doesn’t think it should count as selfless since Samael cared about Chloe, that if she were safe and happy, it wasn’t as if Sam didn’t get _fringe benefits_ from it. But oh how the Host mooned over all of it, like the sappiest love story of all fucking time.

And as if his brother hadn’t torn heaven apart. As if the Rebellion had cost the rest of them nothing at all, what a lie.

“But you think there’s more?” she prods.

“I think that maybe it hasn’t been home since Samael Fell, not really, and a huge part of that is because they all mock me,” he kisses her temple this time, taking solace in the sunshine on his lap. “I was once their leader, and the Sword of God moniker very much earned. I did everything Father asked, and then I was their shame, their painful reminder of what happens to even the useful angels. I hate their stares, but I hate their put downs more. Even Sam---”

“He does?” Ella asks.

Michael chuckles darkly. Oh, did the Devil have his humans so very snowed. At least Chloe Decker, Eve, the good doctor, and Lopez had no idea how truly petty and cutting Samael could be when he chose to. For Lopez’s sake, Michael hopes very much that Samael’s sharp tongue is never unleashed on her.

“Yes, of course. He didn’t know about how badly reaching for my wing in his own Fall hurt me, not at first, but I’ve been on earth before.”

“Yeah you mentioned,” she says.

“It was Amenadiel’s job to escort Samael back to Hell when his vacations got too long. But sometimes, Menny would ask me for help. I guess it was some time around maybe King David’s reign, the first time we saw each other again. Sam has taken great delight in mocking my bent frame and fucked up wings ever since.”

Her eyes blaze almost when she regards him. “I’m going to talk to both Amenadiel and Lucifer about that. I know you avoid them unless there’s something apocalyptic, but they shouldn’t get to say those things to you.”

“It’s just what it is, Lopez. I don’t need you to be my mom on that. My actual one wasn’t any help.” Because she went crazy and tried to use a flood to eliminate humanity. Michael doesn’t add that part out loud. Lopez is dealing well with so many things, but he doesn’t know which straw will finally cause her to snap, and the Goddess is a whole haystack’s worth of issues and cruelty. And they share so much in common, down to the gift of Creation, and Michael really doesn’t want to know what that says about him. “I’m used to it. It’s not like I don’t give as good as I get with Samael.”

“Yeah, but it’s wrong. I mean, you’d never stop trying to get Ricardo to stop making fun of my schizophrenia---”

“But you’re not.”

“He still thinks I am, and I am weird. I see a ghost who, okay, turned out to be the Angel of Death, but that really doesn’t make any more sense or sound less crazy to normal humans anyway.”

“When she shows up and finally answers my calls, I might just kill Rae Rae.”

“But you won’t,” she says.

“No, but she…I hate your family is crappy, Lopez.”

“Well, then I can hate that your family---which again angels should be better---is shitty to you.”

Michael laughs but there’s no humor in it. “Angels might be crappier in some ways than mortals. There’s a lot to be said about that angelic ego, and not one bit of it is good. I mean, I have it too. It’s been taken down a lot between my injuries and now being stranded here, but I…sometimes I feel like I make an exception for you, Ella. I mean, I have a few regulars I meet on the underground poker circuit who seem like decent enough guys. I’d rather have beers with them than Sam or Menny, but you…you’re so good, and you make other humans seem better just by being one of them.”

She frowns at him, and there’s so much worry in her expression that it makes it hard to breathe. “Do angels all see us like ants or monkeys or something?”

Michael bites his tongue before admitting that for most of the Host, humans would have to work to be even as interesting as ants. That wouldn’t help. “We’re endless, Lopez. We’ve been here just a bit after time began, except Amenadiel. He was the First, so he _literally_ started time, itself. We’ve seen planets come and go and species rise and fall, and while humanity seems to be Dad’s favorite, well, He’s had other favorites before even if He never gave the rest Free Will like you guys. It’s just…you’re gone so fast.”

And he holds her closer then, pulling her tightly to his chest. That thought pains him. What did a human have really? Jay mentioned Lopez was forty, maybe already halfway through a paltry eighty or ninety years at best. It was a blink. There had been centuries sometimes between the times Michael had been sent to earth on Father’s errands. He’d been so very confused in the gap between the Renaissance and the American Civil War. The amount of industry that had sprouted up had floored him. And Lopez has so much less time left than that, and he won’t…Dad can keep him banished from the Silver City for eons if He so wills it.

But that’s for later.

For right now, he needs to get through the 26th and the desperate hope he doesn’t drive even her off with his past and his mistakes.

“Yeah, but we’re not ants!” She objects, snapping his attention back to her.

“You’re interesting. I give all of humans that much. I’m starting to see why the First Born gave so much up to be here, why Amenadiel turned his back on everything he ever knew or espoused. Sam was always a lost cause. He was hooked on fucking as many of you as he could the minute he saw Eve.”

Ella blushes and strokes his chest. “You know that Lucifer and I…we were _never_ like that.”

He feels just the tiniest flash of something on her, a bit of goosebumps erupting over her skin. It’s enough to tell Michael that even if she and Sam never slept together and thank Dad for small favors that it is still very much something Lopez considered once upon a time. Even for a while.

But he doesn’t want her to think he spies on her feelings; Michael doesn’t. He just sucks at blocking out fears and what others feel. Lopez is so very easy to read, every expression and thought and need written plainly on her face.

“I’m glad. I wasn’t…it’s probably really shitty of me to say, Lopez, but I’m not known for keeping my big mouth shut either. I was worried that you and Sam did whatever, and I’m a substitute.” He chuckles mirthlessly. “Not that I’m a good replacement. You don’t want the fucked up one.”

_Maybe just the extra crispy version._

Ella groans. “No, never. He offered when I was new to the precinct. I think at the time he offered _every_ newbie, but I didn’t want to. He’s a good friend. Hell, he’s more like my brother than Ricardo ever was.”

Michael isn’t sure which hurts worse, that Sam, being the slut he is, offered or that Samael is also a better brother to a mortal than he has been in millennia to any of the Host save possibly Rae Rae and Menny. He certainly hasn’t felt any real fraternal bond with his twin---quite literally his own flesh and blood—since perhaps when they made the stars and planets together. He isn’t sure why it’s so easy for Samael to give that love and consideration away to mortals when he can’t spare any kindness for Michael.

But it burns.

Dear Dad does it burn, even now.

“Good, I just thought---”

She kisses him, and it’s a long and lingering one that leaves no doubt of her feelings for him, misplaced as they may be. Lopez pulls back and the look she gives him dares Michael to argue. It would cow almost anyone else, but Michael is very good at objecting to things. It’s kind of his other talent besides fear.

“You’re wrong,” Lopez adds for good measure.

He threads the fingers of his good hand through hers. “I want to be. I just…maybe it’s hard to be but so exposed around you. I’ll get used to you seeing me without my jacket and turtleneck on, or at least I hope I will. I’m just sorry I’m not like the others. Story of my life even before my injuries. No one likes the Angel of Fear. Goes with the territory. My gift from Father.”

It has always felt like a curse, that power over fear he _never_ asked for, and Michael wonders so desperately as he always has what it would be like to be desire instead. He wishes it were true, but he has always made his siblings uneasy, even Samael. It is just magnified as an effect on lesser beings like humans. He has to work so hard to keep the terror he can elicit from seeping into everything he does.

“I like you.” She kisses him again. “We can take this as slow as you need, Mike. Trust me, after everything with Pete, I am not in a hurry. I just need you to know you’re not someone I’m with because I just would rather be with Lucifer, and I’m doing some weird single white female thing.”

“I don’t get the reference.”

“Pfft, old movie anyway. _Sin embargo_ , I’m not trying to replace Luce. Dude, I really do not want to have sex with him.”

“But you do me?”

“Someday when we’re there, yeah. Like I said, you’re really hot!”

He smiles and lets her lead him to his bedroom. He’s too drained for more than literal, actual sleeping together tonight, but he needs the load off his mind. He needs to feel his arms curled around her and the softness of her in his grasp. For a few more days, she is his, and Michael will let that last an eternity even after his past drives her off, as it does with everyone else.

**

She is back in that fucking room.

Ella knows it’s a nightmare. Some small, terrified part of her is screaming for her to wake up, but she can’t. Even if she understands that this is mostly just a memory and that Pete is both a bit insane now and locked up in supermax, this is all she’s ever feared. For over a year, she’s always back here. A few times a week.

And his hands are around her throat.

She is only exploring the hot house for a few moments, the cloying smell of lilies clogging her nose, when Pete--- _dream!Pete_ \---bursts in. This isn’t exactly how it happened, but he’s here now and he backhands her hard, making Ella sees stars. Then, they fall to the floor in a tangle of limbs. Ella screams and tries to crawl away, to flee any way she can. He’s on her then, and he’s so heavy, even if he’s not a big guy, and she can’t move fast enough.

She just can’t.

He flips her over, and his hands are around her neck.

Pete’s screaming at her, calling her a slut and a whore and threatening to hurt her worse because he’s so goddamn sick of all her talking. But the most excruciating part is the dark, manic gleam in his eye as he tells her that she’s full of darkness, just like him.

She doesn’t want to believe him.

But even if she’s not actually crazy, she’s been running from the voices and her vices since she was a child, and she can’t anymore. She is so very broken, and Pete knows.

He _sees_.

And the hands are so tight that Ella can’t even cough.

The world goes dark, and she can’t scream.

Ella bolts up in bed and shrieks. But the fear doesn’t stop. In fact, even though she vaguely recognizes Michael’s bedroom and realizes he’s beside her, trying to stroke her shoulder and talk her down, Ella can’t let it go. The air is sucked from her lungs, and she doubles over, gasping for breath.

 _Panic attack_ , her mind supplies. She’s seen it in witnesses and in victims who are on the scene. She’s a trained first responder and knows how to help with that for anyone else. For herself, Ella is a crying, shaking mess. Screaming even as she gasps again.

Michael didn’t even seem to move but there’s water in one hand and a cool rag in the other, and Ella didn’t realize how truly fast angels were till then. Objectively, she knows he’s powerful, but he rarely uses his otherworldly abilities around her, but the proof of his power---that he could hurt her _more severely_ than Pete if he tried---is making her attack worse.

She shakes, her knees knock together, and shock is coming on. The small part of her mind that is still rational is screaming about that.

“Lopez,” Michael’s begging her, and she’s never heard that kind of need in his voice before. “Are you okay? You’re scaring me!”

She’s shuddering, and Ella wants to help him, but Pete’s hands _still_ feel like they’re wrapped around her throat. “I can’t…it’s so cold.”

And she’s freezing even in the pile of blankets Michael must have wrapped around her, even in Southern California. She can’t stop shaking or think or do _anything_.

“Lopez, please, it was just a nightmare,” he reaches for her shoulder and the hot house leaps to life before her, and she can feel it as vibrantly as when she was sleeping.

And, for the first time, she understands even a fraction of what Michael can do. She leaps back from him like she’s been burned and manages to get a sentence out. “Stop touching me!”

He does as asked, and in a moment he’s at the far corner of the room. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t cause the nightmare, but I…I’m making it worse. Lopez… _Ella_ , please, you’re going to be okay. Just tell me you’re going to be okay.”

She can’t even speak any longer, and a small, keening whine fills the air. To her horror and embarrassment, Ella realizes that she’s making that sound and can’t stop.

Michael looks at her, and his expression is so crestfallen that it pains her, but she can’t snap out of it, and the air is thick with fear and rife with anxiety. He’s doing it, and she figures Michael doesn’t even mean to, but he’s as worked up as she is, and Ella cannot escape from it. She’s just human after all.

“I’m so sorry, Lopez. I’ll…I’ll fix it.”

Before she can even ask or what he means, Mike’s gone. Just a blur of motion, and that show of power makes her shake even harder.

**

Eventually after hours or days or half of forever passes, as scared as she is, Ella is aware of soft hands on her shoulders. They are not Michael’s, far too small, and it finally pierces her brain between the animalistic terror over how fast Michael is and fucking Pete all around her from her nightmare still clearing out that it’s _Linda_ who is actually in the room with her.

The shrink sighs and leads her through exercises, gets her breathing normally again, and there’s a shot soon in Ella’s arm. That she remembers from hospitals as a teenager. It’s to calm her. They always say that. And it works of course; Ella gets floaty at first, then comes the darkness, and she’s sleeping too deeply to dream.

When Ella wakes up next and the biggest bouquet of flowers---and they are bright red carnations, nothing even close to lilies---are on the bedside table and a stuffed animal raccoon is beside them. It is wearing an elf hat and possibly one of the dumbest toys she’s ever seen, but Ella loves it immediately anyway. Her throat is so dry, and that goes with the meds too.

Ella forces herself to sit up and works hard to fight her hangover and the dizziness from whatever Linda used to stop the attack.

Reaching out, she greedily opens and sips down a bottle of sparkling water. Then, she finally lets her mind focus on the sights before her. In the far corner of the room, Linda is sitting patiently. She has a tablet that she sets on the floor as she hops up to see Ella. Her check in with the stethoscope is perfunctory and professional, and Linda also grabs a blood pressure cuff she must have brought with her to check Ella’s vitals.

The doctor shakes her head and sighs. “That’s still about 150 over 90. I know it’ll ease back down as the panic dies out. It was closer to 165 when I got here. I…oh, Ella, what have you been doing?”

Ella sighs and feels seventeen again, and like she did when Mamí and Abuelita caught her sneaking out with one of Ricardo’s friends to make out and more in his Camaro. The censure in Linda’s voice isn’t as bad, but it’s definitely there.

“We’re friends. It got too late to drive. Linda, we _didn’t_.” She doesn’t offer the simple truth that if Michael were ready and were comfortable with himself, then Ella very much would have. It’s not really Linda’s business, except she’s an impromptu GP for this situation, working on Christmas Eve _and_ out of her specialty, and Ella should be better.

But she doesn’t owe even her good friend and one of her tribe the truth about her relationships. Not yet.

Linda arches an eyebrow at her but doesn’t continue on the same track when she speaks. “Ella, you know what Michael is, don’t you?”

“An angel, got it. Amenadiel too, and Lucifer’s the Devil. Totally.”

“Yes, I gathered when he showed up in my kitchen unannounced and was panicking over you that you knew. Although I need to talk to Lucifer more about keeping me in the damn loop.” Linda pulls a thermometer out of her bag. It’s not really needed, but Ella supposes vitals are vitals and a baseline is always helpful. “No, I meant, do you understand their powers?”

“Michael didn’t do this on purpose. He _wouldn’t_. I had a nightmare, and he got scared when I had a panic attack after. But, you know, he gets upset, and he can’t control what he does. It all just made me worse and it spiraled.”

Linda purses her lips and nods at the reading on the thermometer she just held up to Ella’s ear. “Yes, but you can’t tell me that he sometimes doesn’t do that deliberately, Ella.”

“He’d _never_. I always have bad dreams about Pete, and that’s fucking Pete’s fault.”

Linda’s expression softens, and she grips Ella’s hand. “I think I understand what happened here. I get that if Michael had caused this deliberately, he’d hardly beg the only doctor her knows and, to be honest, endure a beating from Amenadiel to get me here.”

“A what?”

“The boys got into a fight before I could stop it. Amenadiel jumped to the same conclusion I did, and he slugged Michael in the eye. His right one is pretty swollen. He’s in the other room holding a steak over it.”

Ella swears fiercely in Spanish and Klingon; she’s _that_ pissed before settling on English. “I can’t believe he did that.” She’s struggling out of bed and almost falls until Linda steadies her on the left. “Okay, maybe I also need the number of the bus that hit me.”

“You really should stay in bed. I won’t go home till at least sunset to make sure your blood pressure gets back to normal. You gave both of us a huge scare.”

Ella nods. “I can see that, but Amenadiel _hit_ him?”

“He thought Michael had hurt you on purpose. You can’t really blame Amenadiel for thinking that, not after everything Michael’s done.”

Ella sighs. “I don’t know everything Michael’s done, just guessed there is _a lot of it_.”

“There is.”

“But I do know that he didn’t mean to scare me worse than a Pete nightmare already did. I just need to make sure he’s okay. I won’t be able to rest until I do.”

Linda tsks to herself. “Not long, I mean it about bedrest. I’m sorry too, but I don’t think that going to services in person tonight is good for you, Ella. You need to really stay calm. I’d ask you to go back to your place, but I doubt I’ll get you to let me drive your car over for you.”

“How’d you get here?”

“Michael flew me. It was a first, and it was bumpy,” Linda chirps.

They make their way little by little (and without her puking, dizzy as she is) down the hallway and to the kitchen. Ella finds Michael at his table holding a steak to his face, just as Linda promised, with his good hand and with half a bottle of Vodka open before him.

She sighs, and it feels like forever even if it’s not before Linda can ease her into the chair beside him. Ella offers Linda what she hopes is a polite enough smile when all she wants to do is scream. “Hey, can you maybe go in the living room? You can see the tree, and then, I dunno, you should probably call Amenadiel with an update.”

“Yes, Big Brother was very upset about Lopez. Maybe let him know I didn’t cut her into a million pieces or sell her organs on the black market.”

Ella watches the frosty-at-best exchange unfurl between Linda and Michael. The doctor regards him, her gaze steely, before speaking. “Michael, you can’t blame Amenadiel for being worried. You know how you treated Charlie and---”

“I never touched your brat. I just took advantage of his first cold. It’s hardly my fault the First Born has a mortal kid. I didn’t do it. I just…fuck it, Linda, go and at least tell Menny that Lopez is better. He’s made it more than clear he’ll never believe that I’d never hurt her. But at least let him and Sam by proxy know she’s safe. I might have failed that this morning, but I’d never hurt her on purpose.”

Linda’s expression is still pinched. “I’m not sure I believe that. I do think _you_ believe it.”

“Thanks,” Michael spits out.

Ella can’t bear it and sets her hand over his right one on the table. Shivers erupt over her skin, and he almost yanks his hand back but she won’t let him. It’s not his fault he’s like this, and she doesn’t want him to think this will scare her off.

It won’t. Not after he stood up for her to her family, not after he gave her the truth after Lucifer and her friends hid it for so so long. After Rae Rae turned her life to shit as a kid.

“But you’re dangerous, Michael, and you shouldn’t be near any of us. Whatever fights you have with Amenadiel and Lucifer need to stay between you three,” Linda says.

Michael slips the steak off his face, and Ella winces at the way his right eye is completely swollen shut. “Well, then tell your baby daddy that I’ve gotten the message loud and clear. I still will never hurt Lopez if I can help it.”

Linda pinches the bridge of her nose. “I am not saying that, and I am letting my feelings as a mother cloud my advice. Still, Ella had quite the panic attack today, and she’s still got heightened blood pressure from the episode. You may not mean to be dangerous, Michael, but you are, and you should think about what’s best for Ella if you really care about her as you say you do. I…you’re right, let me give you both space so I can call Amenadiel.”

Linda wastes no time striding out the door and to the patio, and it’s a welcome relief when it is eased shut behind her. Ella still waits until Linda’s halfway across the yard and has her cell to her ear.

Then she turns and kisses Michael’s swollen eye gently. “You didn’t have to risk getting punched for me.”

Michael snorts. “Trust me, Sam and Menny have had their shots at me before and will again.”

“I thought you said if they need help with demons or monsters or whatever they call you.”

“In a year, they’ve needed me for extra muscle about four times. It’s just business, not a bonding activity. But, yeah, this was the first time I’ve had to ‘talk’ to Amenadiel really in a year,” he says, making an air quote with his left hand. “I can’t even blame him. I fucked up, Lopez. I want to hate him and the doctor and everyone for being pissed at me, but I can’t help but think Samael was right all along: I _do_ fuck up everything I touch.”

Ella feels her heart pound in a way that has _nothing_ to do with Pete for once and everything to do with thinking she might lose Michael. They’d been pretty good friends and museum buddies for a while, and even if he owed her more explanations about why her friends hate him, she thought they were building something here too.

He’s not moving on from Los Angeles, is he?

_From her too?_

She grips his right hand so hard in her own that if he were a mortal, he’d be wincing. As it is, Michael doesn’t seem to register the difference. And it’s another reminder in a boatload today for the first time what dating an angel means. He’s so very _other_ , but it’s not his fault.

“You don’t, though. _Pete_ did this, Mike. I have nightmares from him and everything he did. But this is the first time I’ve had one near you. I didn’t know it would just create a feedback loop with you, and I’m betting you didn’t know either.”

Michael snorts and finally pulls his hand away. She feels the loss of contact sharply but doesn’t press. “I didn’t, but I know I can’t comfort anyone, Lopez. I’m no good at it. And now I know how badly I just fuck it up. You were scared so I got scared but then…” he trails off and looks away from her, turning his head so that she gets a front row seat to the eye Amenadiel has currently wounded.

“Does it hurt?”

“I fucking hate that I made you so scared.”

“No, I mean your eye? Does it hurt?”

Michael offers her a wide-eyed look (well for the left eye), and she feels weird in a way. No one ever looks at her like this, like she’s a goddess or something. She’s always been “just Ella” or worse yet, “Crazy Ella,” but he definitely doesn’t look at her that way.

“It’ll be fine in a day or two. No worries. It hurts, but even Celestial wounds don’t last long. Now demon steel is another story.”

“Oh boy.”

“Yup, but I didn’t mean to terrify you. I just…Linda’s right. I need to leave. For one, the mall’s gonna close before I get your present. For another, I just…you’ll feel calmer if I’m not here. You need space to recover, and we established I’m about the least comforting thing you can be near.”

“You’re not!”

And she means both that he’s not a thing and that he’s not discomforting, but she can’t really say more than that because the sadness in his expression is so heavy that it’s making her throat close up. Instead, Ella tries to show him by wrapping her arm awkwardly around his shoulder, but he’s so much taller than she. It’s a far, awkward reach. But Ella manages.

Mike has to get that she doesn’t fault him for this.

She’s the one who dated Pete, who trusted him when her instincts told her better, and who can’t stop the night terrors no matter how much Ella wishes she could. Just another in a long line of fucking terrible dating decisions, and she hopes come the 26th that Michael isn’t another one.

He doesn’t feel like it, but her mistakes have all added up over the years, and she’s painfully aware of that too.

Michael sighs and she knows he wants to leave, can feel him perched on the edge of his chair, but he still relaxes in her grip and sets his forehead against her own. “Lopez, I’m so sorry you had to keep reliving what Pete did because of me. I’d never hurt you. At least not if I can help it, and I hate that I couldn’t. I’ve never been close enough---emotionally I mean---with a human before to realize when shit hits the fan, I just make things that much Dad-damned worse.”

Ella moves to kiss the tip of his, totally keeping in one hundred here, but still ample nose. “Yeah, well I can make a lot of things spiral by talking too much, Michael. I get worked up, I babble, it gets out of control in like a chain reaction too.”

He laughs, and it’s so broken a sound that it tears into her heart. “True, but I gave you a fucking panic attack, and I didn’t even want to. It was the _last_ thing I wanted. I’ve never wished for any other stupid gift from Dad more. Can you imagine how much better anything would be if I were desire instead like Samael?”

Ella blushes and leans back in her seat, hoping Mike doesn’t notice the flushed coloring her cheeks must have by now. The idea of a feedback loop of mutual pleasure is _a lot_ , and Chloe must be a lucky girl. No, wait, the miracle thing. Damn then, girl’s missing out. She shakes herself out of her thoughts before they go way too Skinemax and offers Michael a smile even as she squeezes his hand.

“I get it though. You don’t get to pick your powers any more than I got to pick if Rae Rae was gonna appear to me or not and make me the _think_ I was seeing a ghost. I mean, until now, I just thought I was like a really specific medium. Well, I _hoped_ that was it and not that I’m nuts.”

“You’re not,” Michael replies, his voice a low growl that warms her belly.

“Yeah, and I get you can’t stop the spiraling, but it was the _first_ time that ever happened. There’s no reason you can’t learn better control with fear.”

“I won’t use you as a guinea pig.”

“No, but we can figure something out,” she says, and an idea blossoms in her mind, something she can add to Michael’s gift pile…if she can get him to agree, and Linda to sign off on it. But she’s not too worried. Ella’s been told she’s pretty persuasive when she wants to be.

Or, at least, she has a talent for wearing people down.

“Maybe,” he replies and finally stands. She wants to argue at the lack of contact, but soon Linda will be back and marching her to the guest room for bedrest. “Lopez, I have to get your gifts, but I will be back and tomorrow we’ll do gifts. I’m sorry I made you so sick that you won’t be able to go to service. I know you wanted to share that with me.”

She smiles back at him. “I’m happy as long as we’re together. I’m sure being in the presence of an angel counts as keeping this time holy enough.”

Michael snickers. “Making out with an angel isn’t Mass.”

“It should count as a religious experience.” She winks at him and her heart lightens when he finally smiles back at her. She’s glad she can still reach him a little. “No worries, I have one other gift I need to get, uh, ordered.”

“It’ll deliver by tonight?”

“I have my wiles.”

He bends down and kisses her lips, and Michael, even if he’s banned from heaven, still shouldn’t taste this much like sin. But he does. “Don’t I know it. Look, I’ll be back but only when Linda clears it. I just…I couldn’t bear to lose you. I figure I will when you hear all the shit I pulled, but I want to give you a good Christmas before then, and I just---”

“I can’t promise anything, but I am going to listen to you, Michael. I’m going to try, and I don’t care if I can go to services for once or not. If I’m with you for Christmas, then it’s exactly where I need to be.”

“I’ll think of something,” he offers and turns toward the doorway. “I’ll keep in touch with Linda to just see when you’re blood pressure is calm enough for me to be back. Lopez…Ella, I’m so so sorry.”

She gets the feeling Michael _never_ says these words because she’s rarely heard them, even addressed to her, and also because they sound foreign on his tongue, like he’s trying out a phrase in Spanish and the intonation just isn’t quite right. Ella can see how he’s trying, and she appreciates that.

Appreciates him more than she can say.

“I know you are, and I care about you, and this isn’t your fault. I blame Pete.”

“That’s true, and I wish…I know better than anyone that fear isn’t rational, but I hate that he keeps causing you pain. You’re so much better than him, Lopez.” Michael shrugs and his right shoulder moves less than his left as he does it. “Better than me.”

She shakes her head. “No, no me digas. Stop saying that. I’m not. I’m messed up. I stole cars and counted so many cards that Vegas won’t really let me gamble there, period. I’m not perfect, Michael, and I never was. I’m not just a perky nerd. I am that, but I’m messed up too, and I like that you can see that about me. Don’t think you’re worse than I am. I’m fucked up too, and that’s why we fit.”

Michael nods briskly, even as he shoves both hands in his coat pockets. “Yeah, but I still drove my girlfriend into shock, and nothing you can do as a mortal would top that. Not ever.”

She tries to object but there’s that _speed_ again, and he’s just gone as if he’d never been there. In a way, Ella’s glad, because she has nothing but platitudes to offer him. Yeah, Michael can hurt her---even accidentally---in ways that she can never imagine. He’s that strong, but deep down, she knows emotionally speaking that she has all the control here.

It’s an awesome, quite literally, thought.

And all she wants is to make him smile, and Ella has an idea on that…now if only she can get Linda to cooperate with her.


End file.
